


Joyride

by spacejargon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon Dean Winchester, Gen, Horror, Humor, Soulless Sam Winchester, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-03-23 01:58:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13777287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacejargon/pseuds/spacejargon
Summary: Dean dies by Metatron's hand before Sam can stop him. With the angel tablet shattered, something is wrong with Sam.





	1. Chapter 1

The curtain falls. His heart pounds faster than the metal steps he runs down. Pale, atrophied faces stare at him in blank wonder, like pale fish sinking to the bottom of a fish bowl. His gun is in his hand and his blood is screaming in his ears.

Sam Winchester, a man of impossibilities roped together with a beastly darkness and a desire to do what is right, finds himself watching as Metraton sinks the angel blade in his hand into Dean’s chest. Dean chokes wetly, his eyes wide open while his face slackens. As if he isn’t quite aware that he’s dying, but he is.

The angel blade slides out of Dean and back into Metatron’s hand. He’s not smiling, but he’s not frowning either. His eyes slide over to Sam as a wretched noise comes from him and Metatron’s eyes darken before he stands back from Dean while Sam rushes toward his brother.

Metatron, out of the corner of Sam’s eye, shrugs with malicious smirk. Yellowed teeth and a sly, ugly grin that break into a smile when Dean’s body makes a wet thump as he hits the ground, pulled back up by Sam, who smears blood on his hands. “Should’ve—!” Metatron’s voice cuts out abruptly, leaving Sam consumed in rage when he stands to face him, angel blade in hand. 

The ground rumbles with a warning under their feet. The look in Metatron’s eyes changes like the click of a kaleidoscope sliding another image into place once he meets Sam again, gazing up toward the heavens in either a mocking display or a furtive cross of deep uncertainty. Then his entire expression changes in the shadow of the absolute _fury_ in his eyes, hunching his shoulders and grinding his teeth like a puffed up, not-scared doe in headlights. He is an amalgamation of all things animal and cowardly and Sam only wants to see him torn to ribbons by his own hand.

“ _You_ did this!” Metatron grapples for the right tone, explosively lit off. He moves too quickly for Sam to catch him, though with the angel blade extended it isn’t hard to reach him in the middle.

He does, when the blade meets flesh and he feels the push of resistance, of sinking the blade into skin the same time a sudden coldness runs through him and knocks him back. Dean is dying and Sam has no time to stand there, practically stunned when a coldness rushes through him and replaces every nerve with dead cords.

Just like that, Metatron is gone in a flash when a second wave hits Sam and sends him sprawling back to the wall, slamming him flat onto his back where blood wetly glimmers in the dim halo of streetlights and trash fires. Something metal, the angel blade probably, skitters to the ground.

Sam forgets how to breathe for a sheer second until he’s on the ground, and Dean’s eyes are glazing over…he can’t…

“You gotta get outta here before he comes back...” Dean’s head drops to his chest, his eyes swimming. Sam shoves a rough exhale through his teeth and tries to stop the bleeding, anything to stop the scene unfolding before him.

“Say you’re gonna be all right,” a rush of emotion overtakes him when Dean squeezes his eyes shut. “O-Or we’ll get you a doctor or a spell, you’re gonna be okay—”

Dean’s reaches for him. “Listen to me,” he says in the way of a man who knows he’s dying. “It’s better this way.”

“ _What?”_

“The mark...it’s making me someone I don’t wanna be.”

Then it’s a rush that Sam doesn’t quite process. One moment he’s off the ground with Dean, promises he can’t keep just yet overflowing as Dean shambles alongside him. Except with each step Dean’s falling and stumbling back, dragging more and more as cold grips Sam’s heart tightly.

“Listen, Sammy,” Dean’s back hits hard against the wooden crates behind him. The look he gives Sam is terminal. Out of the blue, like a flash of lightning, it hits him. “I’m proud of us.” 

A shiver breaks through Sam when Dean falls against him. It grips him tightly, and it leaves just as quickly as one last breath escapes the both of them.

“Dean? Dean!” The repeating cadence of _no, no-no, no,_ brings him nothing but emptiness. His brother is much warmer than him and it’s a strange thought to think, let alone grasp onto as he does. With barbed teeth and a fuzzy tongue, he wraps his arms around Dean, coiling around him with the tightest embrace that would kill a normal man.

He shakes it off in the afterthought as the sobs start to coalesce. They are not ginger or tender while he cradles his brother, but broken glass in shards of anger and pain and all things tightly bundled which make a man of Sam Winchester.

 _Here lies Sam Winchester,_ the trail of thought keeps stringing itself brokenly along. Grim humor runs in the family so it’s not off-putting at first. Uneasy, maybe, if he had taken the time to notice that with these streaming thoughts, pushed off to the side as he struggles to get Dean away from this place, he would watch the twisted shapes the words bloom into.

His knees fold like paper cranes. Delicate little things, snapping in half with a monstrous strength.

Oh, how he’s failed.

~

His hands don’t shake when he calls up Crowley without the given magnitude of the situation. It’s still there—somewhere, in his voice when Crowley responds, crawling out of his hole like a rat to take the morbid leftovers of yet another pursuit gone wrong.

Where along the way did he become this _depressing?_  

He sits and keeps vigil while Crowley is threatened with his life to _fix it_ and he rolls his eyes when Sam means it. He gives an odd sort of sound, a laugh, apparently, though too strangled to sound like much more than deflating lungs. The last hurrah of sounds, where the ribs are pressed to breaking and the end of ends is a choking cough of spit and blood.

Whiskey in a spindly glass worn with use is the candlelight service he’s proffered to himself. It keeps a flicker of comfort in him when Crowley bypasses him, disappearing down the hallway swathed in darkness like the rest of the bunker. His coattails flutter and flicker like the wisps of a ghost, moving in and out of reality as the world becomes a blurry, salty sea of a marble.

As the liquor swirls in his glass, he can practically hear the low, scathing murmur of Crowley’s voice reverberating in his bones from the floorboards. All around him is darkness and a shot of light in amber-colored spirits, not enough to revive his own. Especially not…

Cold. The whiskey in the glass is warmer than him. Compared to it, he’s frozen in place. There’s no heartwarming sting of alcohol or even a slight buzz. Exhaustion seeps from him in every direction, though like a mindless stare in the distance, it doesn’t focus.

Dean is gone. Depraved and rattled until shaken too hard. He fell into Sam like a deck of cards sliding off a table, or an overturned poker table. All these numbers and hands mean nothing now, dipped in alcohol in the hope that one will spark.

The hardened ache in his soul feels off, when Crowley’s mutterings cut out and Sam has more silence to properly throw himself into. Dean is gone and Sam is, of course, broken. Each breath he takes is a squeezing, throw your keys off the side of the bridge because the car’s breathed her last kind of gone. The oil slick dried under his eyes is haunting him even now.

In his hand rests a bloodied, but otherwise perfect angel blade. It sits as a reminder, for not only what could have been, but what is now. Metatron is still out there, licking his wounds like the filth he is, yet alive. Slicing through a chunk of him shouldn’t have done more than make him blush.

There is no stain of bright lights in his retinas to prove that Metatron’s gone. He would have heard it, felt it, looking for any sort of sign that his brother had not died for nothing.

Dean would be disappointed in him. Not angry, not yet maybe, though disappointed. It’s an awful thing to think, given the extenuating circumstances but it buzzes around, amongst the slosh of halfhearted whiskey and silent prayers left unheard.

There is no one left to care.

Buzzed, not drunk with grief, Sam focuses on a point in the distance. His vision starts to clear, warranting sips of his drink with the empty bottle next to him.

The salt at the rim of his glass, wet and cold, adds a spike of contrast for the soothe of scratchy honey wool. Cotton swabs stained with blood sit in the trash, for no matter how hard he scrubbed at himself, the guilt never really came off.

His fingers are haunted with reminders. Silence fills the bunker in a way it never meant to before. It’s like the cold, though not extending past his ears, where inside, little by little, emptiness fills him from the bottom up.

The feeling covers with a frost. Parts break off: jagged, but stone cold.

He can’t remember why he’s sad in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a biblical comparison, perhaps, and by the first six weeks, Crowley has found himself the butt of his own joke. The first week is light and darkness, going by the fixture of a new set of pearly black eyes for a Winchester and the light having returned to him.

Four weeks in, just a few lumbering days of booze, karaoke, and, as Crowley comes to find out in a particularly ungracious manner, sleeping with a bar waitress _in his bed._ Like an angry bee that can’t pollinate but he’ll take it out on everything and everyone, with the voracious appetite of a demon. Dean doesn’t even look up at first when Crowley stands there, a mix of irritation and a bit of shock, because, well, he thought there _was_ a kinship forming between them.

“In _my_ bed?”

Dean is wholly unapologetic. That grin makes it worse. “Whoops.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean calls just as easily, where the blond, Kelly, or something, not like either of them care to learn her name, pipes up with her pretty blond voice and tells them to get a room.

“Had one,” Crowley is pointedly trying not to notice Dean’s enjoyment of how uncomfortable he makes him. “‘Til you two soiled it.”

By the time the blond bird— _Ann Marie_ is gone, Dean’s leaning against the bed with hands folded under his head. Above the sheets, Crowley spots the irony of his demonic possession tattoo emblazoned on his chest His blood simmers as Dean shoots him a salacious smirk, his eyes blinking black with a worn out one-trick pony show.

“All you gotta do is say it if you want a show,” Dean huffs and rolls out of bed, his smirk twisting when Crowley immediately looks away when the sheets fall from him. “Don’t be shy. She’s nothing.”

“Nothing that’s been sleeping with you more than once?” Crowley tsks in a way he knows Dean won’t care. This wanton behavior of his is starting to get on his nerves. “Don’t get attached, Dean.”

“Jealous?” Dean crows when Crowley throws a shirt at him, irked by his insistence to stay as naked as the day he was revived. Okay, maybe not. Still, the lackadaisical way a man can just throw himself into the life of a demon, it’s unsettling.

“Be still, my heart,” Crowley rolls his eyes and decides to make his exit. This problem will have to be dealt with.

Soon.

~

The emptiness rising to the occasion after Dean’s death has turned into radio silence. In his absence, the bunker has been vacated once Sam ambled down the hallway, filled with hollowed courage, only to find Crowley and his brother missing.

The grieving process ends there. At first chance, he’s out and moving, breaking pavement. The bunker stays empty for a while, reasonable given the empty search beginning and ending with Crowley.

His efforts land him a crossroads demon, hardly worth the shoe polish it takes to color her eyes black. Lester, a weak-willed man made of limp resolution and cheap beer, is a casualty lost for a cause. Once she appears, she hisses at him like a rabid animal, apparently just taking in the devil’s trap a bit too late. He doesn’t care for listening to her threats, which turn into bargains when he shoves her into a tree and cuffs her there, hanging her heads above her head. Forgetting to gag her had been his biggest mistake when her whining wouldn’t stop, tucked along threats and insults of cursing him, damning him to a hell that already exists without the fire and the shadowy screams of the damned.

There’s only one person he cares about and he makes this abundantly clear with her in the silence she makes when her threats have turned to dust. She’s strung up before any more can be thought of, now wriggling whilst trying to make it look like she has control. She should know, though given her kind and their complete lack of foresight, Sam doubts it in the darker corners of where thoughts have been banished.

“You’re completely animal,” she watches him with wide eyes when he pulls out the demon knife. When it rests against her pulse, she twitches with a shudder. “There’s nothing in those eyes of yours, Winchester. What’s gotten into you? Using a man like that to get to me? You sold his soul for him—for nothing!” She pauses for comedic or sardonic effect, pretenses of _not scared at all_ with every jerk and flinch stifled in her meatsuit of choice. “Oh, something happened. Didn’t it?”

Sam’s eyes are hard. She’ll never find what she’s looking for. “Where’s Crowley?” The knife digs into her pulse, biting into blood that trickles down her throat.

“Didn’t get the memo? Not telling.” The blade curves around her throat and presses hard, slicing cleanly through her. She sputters, stumbling off balance with her hands tied above her head at the shock, not expecting it. Sam remains unconcerned, no heat to his eyes but a coldness that sets in his fingers and the rough grab of her chin to jerk her eyes to his.

“ _Where_ is he?” His fingers hold a bruising grip over her and her pulse jumps. It must be the vessel’s response, seeing as this demon spits at him, laughing all the while. Another slice cuts jaggedly through her shoulder, pressing deeper to stain her throat with a necklace of red. “Tell me where Crowley is. You _know._ ”

“ _Eat me.”_

Blood wells up like beads, reeking of sulfur. “So what if I do? You don’t need to—!”

The blade draws over her arm, pushing into her skin and straight into muscle as she lets out a scream. She shudders when it’s done, panting with an open mouth and eyes of a rabbit are all Sam sees, bright and panicked.

“Where is Crowley?” One last time, a hint of malice that needn’t be noted. This time he gets an answer, when the blade returns to her throat and slices her jugular.

Blood spurts from her as she shrieks. “I don’t _know!_ ” A goblet is already in Sam’s hand, procured from his pocket in anticipation for this moment. He holds it up under the river of blood staining her dress, demanding. “Nobody knows. He’s not answering ever since—!”

“Make the call.” She shakes her head and squirms away from him uselessly. _“Make the call!”_

“Okay, all right, pl—” She stops herself before the word can escape her, because she knows it’s surrender the moment it slides free. Sam already knows, therefore he doesn’t care when she summons the words to make the blood bubble, but nothing comes. She confirms this when she looks up, her eyes narrowed as a streak of anger courses through her tattered image.

“He’s not answering, just like I said!”

His jaw sets with a click of bone. He doesn’t speak, making her shudder when she finds what she’s looking for when he carves her cheek into a fillet of flesh, hanging like a wilted flower from the sinewy muscles contorting when exposed to the dark air. She screams all the while, the sound echoing off of trees from a forgotten place.

“What is _wrong_ with you!?” Blood splatters on his face in between breaths she chokes on to scream with. As she’s coming to terms with reality, the warmth of the blood on Sam’s face distracts him for a solitary moment. He raises a hand, wiping off the specks that reek of sulfur, though feel like glowing embers with the heat of it.

The demon watches, wide-eyed with abject horror when Sam holds up his stained thumb and licks her blood off with nothing more than mild annoyance.

“You’ve lost your mind!” She shakes, panic setting in too late. “You’re—You’ve lost any ethics you humans have! What the hell are you!?”

A hand strikes her and throws her head back against another branch behind her, making a dull thud as it hits. “ _Tell me_ where Crowley is,” is all he says, calm and collected when he holds the knife under her left eye, his fingers prying it wide open.

“You’ve lost any semblance of a soul…!” She tries to pull away from him, unable to do so as the knife digs into the soft flesh beneath her eye and rips it open. Her screams echo in his ears, growing louder when the blade meets bone and it chips off like soap to a whittling knife.

A squelch and a pop shatter the fragile seconds where she runs out of breath, dropping from her ghastly screams into shrieking as her lips move, but nothing except her screams tug free.

~

Week two, out of the twilight and into the real world, the sky and water had been made apparent to Dean. Now as a demon, neither were a limit before, but now a challenge for how much trouble Dean can cause. The answer? More than enough.

Howling at the moon is a great way to introduce a Winchester into the world. With the bars lit only by moonlight and neon signs he’s got himself a tiger on a leash, with all pointed teeth and a reestablished love for drinking regardless of day or night. Not that it matters, as Crowley’s more of a partaker of fine whiskey and showing off, just a little, to all the demons who never thought he could do it. In three short weeks, he’s the king, and a king must hold a threat over the heads of the unruly.

The fourth week bleeds into the fifth when Dean drinks like a fish with a new life breathed into him. It’s hellfire and the smoke of burning souls, but hey, if the shoe fits. Five weeks is when Dean catches on that the fun is being challenged. Crowley does not want fun. Dean does.

Dean is all too aware of Crowley’s acts of prodding and nudging him. He clearly wants to take Dean and crush him in his hands to mold him into the fantasy he’s been constructing. There are long pauses where they don’t speak, and in the time, if Dean’s not busy singing along to one hit wonders or itching to start a fight, he notices Crowley’s antics.

Crowley gets on his nerves. Just like the demons that ambush him, spitting their anger like it’s supposed to make him angry. It doesn’t—it’s more like a buzzing mosquito when they talk and taunt. All he wants is the skin mag in his hand and already he knows there’s going to be blood in this little shitbox of a convenience store.

“What?” he calls to the pathetic unassuming lump of a man with black eyes, unimpressed when he catches a blade in a downward spike toward him. “You think I haven’t learned that trick before?” His eyes bleed black and the demon in a middle-aged man is unconvinced, rabid with rage. Dean throws him back with ease into the rack of toilet rolls and other garbage, unsheathing his own blade while the demon tries to get up.

His blade strikes home and slices through the meatsuit’s flesh like butter. Once the blood is in the air, he can’t get enough. Each stab is freeing and demands more payment be taken for the annoyance that is this stain of sulfur and flesh. He doesn’t stop when he throws the demon to the floor, the cashier shrieking like a rabbit being skinned alive.

His hand comes down several more times, painting the floor and himself with a spray of crimson. The metallic reek is like a drug in how it wakes him up, sating and soothing while digging its burrs into the itch to do more. The blade wants more, but by the time he’s done, it’s not worth it when his victim’s head is split open and he’s nothing more than warm flesh ribbons.

He turns, tucking the blade in his arm and scans the floor, finding his magazine and flicks it, brushing off the debris and the blood staining the pair of tits on the cover.

As he leaves, his eyes wander up to where the cashier disappeared, catching the flicker of a red light attached to a security camera.

He turns, a slow smile spreading as he leaves.

~

Once considered a note of mysterious origin becomes mocking. In Dean’s penmanship, impossible for his brother who was _dead_ six weeks ago, are the words sprawled like a lackluster apology.

His arm is useless and he’s running out of answers.

_Sammy let me go._

No leads have made themselves known in the time that has passed. Now, sitting at his laptop, he stumbles upon an article of interest:  _Ohio Man Murdered in a Convenience Store in Amherst Junction, Wisconsin._

His curiosity leads him to believe there’s more to it. After reading through the article, mentioning the victim had been a murderer gone missing after massacring his family, Sam knows he’s onto something. Especially with the picture provided in grainy resolution of a figure in plaid, known as the prime suspect for the murder.

His fingers get a hold of his phone before he has enough time to process it properly. Castiel’s number is on speed dial and it only takes two rings for him to pick up. Sitting here in the bunker in the absence of Dean has left Sam with a special kind of jaded feel, unable to keep his eyes from wandering the halls whenever he goes anywhere near Dean’s room.

“ _Sam?”_ Castiel’s voice is watery, weak. Coughing interrupts him and Sam waits, seconds ticking by he counts before Castiel wheezes when he tries to apologize. _“Sorry. How are you?”_

“I found an article about a man, Drew Neely, murdered in Amherst Junction,” he starts, coughing sounding through his phone as he drums his fingers on his leg. “Drew Neely killed his entire family and disappeared three years ago. I think this might have something to do with Dean.”

“ _Are you sure?”_ There’s something in Castiel’s voice that rubs him the wrong way. It must be stress—the feeling fades, anyway, when Castiel starts coughing once again and Sam pushes away the thought that it’s irritating. It must be—for Castiel.

“Yeah, I’m sure. The—” He’s interrupted by worsening coughs and the sound of fabric rustling, most likely Castiel trying to conceal them. When the coughing fit spans for longer than a few moments, his mind changes before Castiel can try to apologize again. “Actually, you know what, it’s nothing.”

“ _What do you mean it’s nothing?”_ More coughing, followed by confusion. _“What else did you find out?”_

“Y’know, I looked into it too much and now I realize that it’s nothing.” Sam busies himself with raw nerves everywhere making it too hard to sit and concentrate. He paces around, already determined now to end the call. “Sorry to bother you, Cas.”

“ _Wait, I can help,”_ his offer falls short when he can’t stop himself from the hoarse coughing.

“No, I’m fine. Really.”

Hurt touches Castiel’s tone. _“Sam, you can’t blame what that demon did to your shoulder on me. You now I—”_

Just hearing the excuse makes him prickly with a desire to end the conversation. “I know. It was nothing.”

Silence grows between them for a pause. When he’s had enough time to put the phone back to his ear after ripping it away, considering thumbing the ‘end call’ button, Castiel speaks in a low, tired voice. _“How are you, Sam?_ ”

“Fine.” _End call._

~

Either demons are much dumber than he remembers, or this new wave of them are as stupid as they get. Really, really stupid. The moment Dean stumbles out of the bar, he’s already aware that he’s being watched. And followed. How stupid.

The guy blathers about what he really doesn’t care about—Abaddon, the dead bitch queen this guy just can’t quite get over. He ends up with a new paint job, rather; a nearby car ends up with a new paint job after a scuffle, along with a head-sized dent and the slice of the First Blade through the weak knitting that is a meatsuit’s skin and squishy parts hardly seems like it’s worth it.

Ugh. Crowley’s interference is so obvious it stinks off the corpse left behind. All of this, from the shitbox to here, now, is Crowley’s work. It’s too glaringly noticeable to be forgotten and if Crowley thinks it’s going to do anything, it’s a piss poor attempt.

Right now, he’d rather not deal with it. Crowley will come whimpering to him over something, as he has been for the past few weeks. Whatever it is, given that Dean doesn’t exactly care enough to listen, he’ll make a fit of it soon.

He turns and goes, leaving the demon behind. If he cared, it would be a message.

~

One quick trip to the local police station leaves him in a dizzy, numbed shock. Black eyes flash over and over like a burned out warning light behind his eyelids. The surveillance footage means little to him when from the first second of watching it, he _knew._

There is a _demon_ in his brother, parading around in him. Now he knows the truth behind Dean’s disappearance.

The deputies mean nothing when he leaves straight for the convenience store. Black eyes fill his head and quiet the disparaging thoughts, already fueling new ones to be made.

Once inside the convenience store, his eyes seek the exact place Drew Neely, or his meatsuit, had been murdered. His feet, however, walk him to the cashier, or the surviving witness, as termed by the deputies that directed Sam here.

The cashier is an unassuming lump of teenager in a cheap outfit. Sam shows him the badge, as per procedure, and immediately settles in. There’s no time to waste, with the rage boiling under his skin. “Did you happen to see or hear anything before the suspect killed the victim? Or notice anything strange like the smell of sulfur, anything?”

The cashier stares at him like he has two heads. “What? Uh...no, not really. I mean, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

A spark poisons Sam’s tongue. “You _weren’t_ paying attention? Isn’t it your job to report to the police when a man is being _murdered_ in your store instead of standing around and watching him die?” The venom that comes from him surprises him, though its effect is limited to a cold spot in his mind where he considers how intimidating he must sound to the kid.

“Uh, no, I wasn’t. Because when that guy was slaughtering that dude, I was having a code brown moment in my favorite pants when I didn’t know if I was next.” He pauses, leaning forward in an act of intimidation that withers to the level of just above stupid. “So no, I didn’t. One minute this guy came in, reading some porn, and then the other guy was gonna kill him, then he got thrown back and it was like a war zone, man. He was just tossing that guy around and then he hammered on him.” The cashier mimes the action, raising up his hand as Dean—or not Dean had done in the footage, bringing his hand down with force. “It was brutal. He was all ‘Say! My! Name! Say my name! Say my name! Say my _name!_ ” He ends it, drawing out the last word as he mimics screaming it, clearly lost in a fantasy of his own.

The disgust is hardly disguised as Sam swallows, disturbed. “Did the man in the plaid, the suspect, did he say anything to you before or after this happened?”

The cashier returns from his imaginary venture, shrugging uselessly. “Uh, he said ‘where’s the porn’.” Something crosses his eyes, as if remembering something. He ducks down behind the counter, pulling out a used, black phone and holds it like an offering.

“Oh, yeah, this was left behind too. I figured since you’ll be heading back to the station I’ll just give it to you. It’s the dead guy’s phone, the cops must’ve left it here by accident or something.”

Sam takes it without further hesitation, nodding his head in thanks and promptly excuses himself. Once outside, he realizes the phone’s battery is charged and it’s unlocked, frozen on a message that coils tightly in his stomach.

The sender’s name is all too familiar. He dials the contact, anger prodding through the numb that’s left him shaken from that day.

Of course, Crowley picks up on the first ring. His own phone sits beside him, working with the information given on the message on a GPS.

“ _Aren’t you supposed to be...dead?”_

“Nope, just using a dead man’s phone.” His fingers clench into a white-knuckled grasp around the phone. “You have some demon parading around in my brother’s meatsuit.”

“ _Ah, moose. Your brother and I were beginning to wonder if you’d hit another dog.”_ He snickers while Sam ignores the taunt. “ _Your brother is very much alive, courtesy to the mark. The ‘demon’ is him, all him, moose.”_ Crowley sounds smug. _“Something troubling you?”_

“You sent demons after him. The convenience store in Amherst Junction. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“ _Language, moose. And I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You do realize that Abaddon’s supporters didn’t just die out right after you killed her, right? Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”_

Sam’s teeth grind together in a sound that makes Crowley bark a laugh. _“I’ll kill you.”_

“ _You know what? I have a theory you’re not mad at those demons. You’re not even mad at your brother for_ being _a demon. You’re angry because he’s with me now, and he’s having the time of his life rather than wasting it with you.”_

“What are you talking about?”

“ _Oh, come on, moose. We’re the buddy team novels dream about. He’s out here living it up with_ me _and enjoying every second. We’re best friends, moose. Thelma and Louise, while you’re sitting miserably because you’re starting to realize he never even liked you.”_

“I will find my brother, Crowley.” Sam’s words hiss like water vapor from boiling blood meeting the frigid air wrapped around him. Crowley’s laughter echoes, though when Sam listens closely, it sounds an awful lot like the crossroad demon's screams.

“ _And what? Not save him?”_ He cackles like he’s told the world’s greatest joke. _“Like I said, moose. You really don’t care about your brother as much as he doesn’t give a damn about you.”_

The call abruptly ends. Sam’s phone buzzes, showing a match. And coordinates.

Beulah, North Dakota.

~

Crowley makes a god-awful noise that sounds like a sigh. Dean, already irked by him standing there like a hovering fly, doesn’t wait to kill the silence over the ambiance in the bar.

“You sent those demons to kill me,” Dean nurses a whiskey in front of him, staring straight forward. If it wasn’t so irritating to get rid of them, he’d find a reason to laugh. “What did you think was gonna happen?”

Crowley slides into the seat next to him, looking peeved as always. “To keep you sharp.” His eyes focus on Dean, who ignores him entirely in favor of watching the ice in his drink. Crowley’s eyes are like black beads, shiny in the light and dull with nothing more than a pesky interest. “The mark _needs_ to be sated. _You_ have to kill, or—”

“Or I’ll turn into a demon,” Dean smirks at his own joke, swirling his glass in his hand as he sits at the wooden counter, uninterested in everything around him now that Crowley’s here.

“Look, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, _Dean,_ ” he stresses Dean’s name like a curse, tersely interested in finding out new ways to make Dean angry. “But I don’t like it. We need to keep you sharp. I needed to keep you sharp for our professional future. Beyond booze, women, and starting fights.”

Dean raises a brow, unimpressed. “This place is fine.” He swallows a mouthful of amber, relishing the burn. “Go somewhere else. I don’t care.”

“I’m tired of this fetid petri dish of broken dreams and beer, and if I have to stay here one more night, I’ll cut off my own face.” Crowley eyes him with disgust Dean doesn’t care for. “How many suicide wings can you eat? How many one hit wonders can you butcher with karaoke?”

Dean sets his glass down firmly on the stained counter top, showing years’ worth of marks from wet glasses and chipping away at its front. “The thing is, you told me I could howl at the moon and live as I please. No timestamp, no expiration date. So I’m gonna sit here and drink and be merry, and you can go do whatever the hell you want.” His fingers dig into the wooden counter, easily splintering and causing cracks to form like fissures.

Crowley starts up again, encompassed in his passive petty anger as he tries to lecture Dean, who promptly tunes him out. Dean glances over at the nearby jukebox, seeing a swath of lonely girls sitting there and waiting for attention, clutching at drinks and wearing the outfit of sluts.

Just as he’s about to get up and make a move, Crowley’s voice pierces through his veil of ignorance. “Well?”

“Pass.”

Crowley looks baffled. Like a gaping fish as he struggles to control himself. “I’m offering you this. The King of Hell, Dean Winchester by his side. _Together_ we rule. _Together_ we create the perfect Hell.” He motions with his hands as Dean watches him with disinterest, lazily giving the effort needed to give Crowley his satisfaction. “ _So_ all of that has bloomed between us never ends.”

He must notice Dean’s tuned him out again while he’s already out of his seat when Crowley calls to him, flushed with anger. “Oh, did I forget to mention I spoke to the moose earlier?”

Dean turns. “What?”

“Sam’s been tracking us. For a while now. Well, he called me after he found a phone from one of the...” He waves his hand. “Not important. Words were spoken, emotion...perhaps too many words and emotions.” He has the audacity to shrug. “My bad.”

Dean steps toward him and locks eyes, huffing lowly as he slides back into his seat. “You sold me out.”

“Like I said,” Crowley grits out through his teeth, fed up and Dean knows it. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. ‘Sold you out’? Try doing you a favor. All of this has been a favor. A _gift._ I have done all of this for you, free of charge, in the request that you at least _consider_ all that I’ve done.” He slides out of the chair, his expression ragged and his shoulders tensed. “You know what, take the night. Decide. You know where to find me.”

And like that, he disappears into the crowd of moving bodies and beer, leaving Dean to himself.

~

A strange rattling sound comes from the hood, driving late at night on a rural road in what must be the middle of nowhere. Sam is quick to react, though not as quick to anticipate the car shutting itself off, forcing him to steer it to the side of the road and come to a grinding halt.

As he gets out of the car to investigate, the sound of another car not too far behind him catches him. He studies the hood for a moment, up until the blinding lights of the other said car arrive far too soon. He holds out a hand, mostly to block out the light as he’s sure that he’ll be noticed by the other driver.

The other car comes to a smooth halt behind his. Dangerously close. The strange thought pops into his head and this time it’s not censored when he takes a step closer to the other car, hovering near the hood of his own.

The shape of a man appears in shadow, covered by his blinding headlights. “You need some help out here?” Gravel crunches under thick boots as he approaches, to which Sam accepts graciously. His mind is still preoccupied with the earlier call to think too much on what could be wrong with his car with an injured shoulder.

“Well, looks like I’m the right guy for the job. Lemme give ya a hand with that,” the guy rounds Sam’s car, coming up beside him and offering to pop the hood. Sam nods, stepping back to let him do so as the hood pops with a metallic click as the stranger props it up.

“These new cars and their computerized brains, one zero out of place and kaput, right?” The man glances around in the dark, turning on a flashlight he must’ve pulled from a pocket. “I think I know what’s wrong.”

“Oh?” Sam’s distracted brain curses him for not paying attention when the light of the torch moves to a red light sitting near a corner, belonging to a strange contraption.

“Look, there’s your problem.” His voice changes in an instant.

“What is that?”

“A killswitch.” The stranger holds up his other hand with a dark smile. “Right here’s the remote.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, Cole.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

“Not a leftie, I take it,” the stranger hums to himself when Sam hits the ground hard. His shoulder crunches under him, making the man wince in borrowed sympathy. But in keeping with the spirit of things, he ties up the much taller Winchester like a prized hog and tosses him into the back of his own car. From there he takes the time to dump Sam’s car where it isn’t immediately noticeable on the road.

Along the way to the special place he’s designed for exactly this kind of encounter, his hog wakes up in the form of an annoyed, not pissed, bundle of man tied up in the back of his car. Normally, he informs Sam as he wakes, he would keep him in the back, but since all his tools are there, he didn’t want to risk a bumpy ride.

“How thoughtful,” Sam snaps back.

They pull up to the warehouse in daylight where Sam is hauled out of the car, stumbling to his feet with a black sack over his head and cuffed down to his ankles. For as much of a threat he’s read up on Sam Winchester to be, he sure doesn’t look like it, lumbering along when he’s practically dragged to the toy box.

“Welcome to the toy box, Sammy.” Under the bag, he’s certain Sam’s glaring at him when he lands roughly in his chair, soon to be strapped down. “Yes, I know your name. I know your brother’s name, too. And the sick things you and your brother have done, Sammy. Which is why you’re here, because that brother of yours is one evil son of a bitch. How’s that chicken wing?”

“If you did your research, then you’d know I’m not ‘Sammy’,” Sam’s muffled response is in an eerie deadpan. Surprising, with how calm he is about all of this. Must be used to it.

“I remember my first broken arm. I was with my brother, and there were some pretty fine ladies out in front of a DQ. So my brother told me to pop a wheelie.” He makes a noise to go along with the story, shaking his head. “Dean-o and I go way back.”

“You’re wasting your time on my brother. What are you supposed to be, a hunter?”

Stunned, he decides he’s had enough. “Sure, call it that. Let me bring you up to speed: Nyack, New York, 2003. Your older brother Dean-o killed my father. The name’s Cole Trenton, but I doubt you psychopaths care all that much.” Cole rips the bag off of Sam’s head, willing to meet the eyes of the brother of a beast. “So I’ll make it simple. You’re gonna tell me where your brother is, and I’ll let you live. Him? Doubt it.”

Sam meets his eyes, staring blankly at him. Then his expression changes, his eyes narrowing. Cole takes it for anger, smirking to himself. “Don’t be too bummed out about it. Your brother’s a monster and I’m doing you a favor. There’s no shame in giving him up, you know.”

“Then you could do yourself a favor and stop,” Sam’s words lash out at him when he turns his back. “Before things go badly for you.”

Cole grabs a fistful of Sam’s hair, sneering as he tilts the Winchester’s head back, eying him closely. “Is that a threat, Sammy? Because I’m just not buying it.”

“I’m not selling,” Sam huffs, keeping his cold gaze centered on Cole. If he was a lesser man, he’d shiver at the look of death in his eyes. “Dean’s a demon now. You can’t fight him even if you tried. So go back to the army recruiter post that spit you out in the first town you saw. That’s the farthest you’re ever going to get.”

“Well you’re no Hail Mary either, are you, Sammy?” Sam’s jaw grinds together when Cole releases him, circling around like a predator over his prey. “Demon, Santa Claus, or even the Easter Bunny, your brother’s a killer. And there’s no doubt he messed you up something fierce. However, I don’t really care. You’re on your own with that therapy. I did two tours in Iraq. Special ops. Darfur. The Congo. I've seen suicide bombers and child soldiers so hopped up on speed that they could barely talk, but they could sure as hell shoot an AK… Don’t tell me about monsters, ‘cause I've met my share.” Cole flips open a metal toolbox, which is lined with pliers and other instruments that Sam recognizes as meant for torture. “I’m just here to put down that monster for what he did to my father.”

He rifles through his tool box, pulling out Sam’s phone with his other hand and setting it down on the small setup table in front of him. “Time to make that phone call, Sammy. Ready to talk to big brother Dean-o?”

Sam _rolls his eyes_ at him. “Your funeral,” he quips, leaving Cole not sure if Sam’s either trying to act tough, or he’s just as psychopathic as his brother.

Cole dials Dean as Sam sits back, watching him with a strange look. As he mentioned before, if he were any less, he’d think twice about the situation he’s in now. But now with the phone ringing he waits, holding it up to his ear, and a mocking finger to Sam to keep quiet. For now, at least.

The click of the call going through has Cole in an instantly better mood. _“Sam? I thought I told you to let me go.”_

“Dean-o,” he greets, jovial at the occasion. “Sorry to break it to you, but your brother can’t come to the phone right now. Do you know who I am?”

The gruff voice that responds is just as dark as he remembers. _“The pizza man? Why do I care? And what did you do to my brother?”_

“Ah, ah; one at a time, Dean-o. Your brother’s fine, but I can’t guarantee he will be for long. Why don’t you come pick him up and we have a nice chat?” He casts a look toward Sam who watches him with a raised brow and a neutral expression. “I promise I’ll play nice. If you cooperate.”

“ _Again: why do I care? How do I even know he’s alive?”_

“Cold of you to be like that,” Cole turns back to Sam, stalking toward him. “But none of my concern. Monsters breed monsters. C’mon Sammy, say ‘hi’ to your big brother.”

Sam keeps his mouth clamped shut and stares at Cole blankly.

Irked by Sam’s lack of concern, he sighs, rolling up his sleeves and slugging him in the jaw. When the chair hits the floor, he pulls the phone back to his ear. “Proof of life, Dean-o. Clock’s ticking if you want your brother in one piece.”

“Dean!”

Cole turns away from him, leaving Sam on the ground. “So psycho jr. has feelings after all. What about you, Dean-o?”

“ _Leave him alone. You don’t want to mess with me.”_

“What if I do? What are you, not even half a man?”

“ _Sam’s problems aren’t mine, I told him to give up on me a long time ago. You figure it out.”_

“Not so fast, Dean-o. I’m gonna hunt you down whether or not you show up. So let me make it clear: I will kill your brother, and everything you care about, you son of a bitch, until I find you. So don’t leave me waiting.”

There’s a silence then. Dean’s voice crackles through the receiver. _“Kill him if you want. I’ll be waiting.”_

Cole ends the call, throwing Sam’s phone in an angered fit. He grumbles to himself while Sam sits on the floor, his voice a growl as he talks to himself. When he finally addresses Sam, he’s just as enraged. “Your brother’s a real piece of work, Sammy. It’s a shame, because if I let you live, he won’t give a crap about you anyhow.”

Out of sight, Cole chooses a device and heads back over to Sam, pulling the chair back up with his boot. Sam rises with a force, his head slamming into the back of it as the cuffs around his wrists and ankles jingle, the leather belts holding him in place groaning. “You won’t find him...even if you want to. Give up on him.”

“And do what, let you go?” Cole tsks as he approaches the chair, letting a fist fly and slam Sam’s head to the side with the force. “See,” another punch cuts Sam’s jaw, snapping his teeth together. “Your brother couldn’t,” another fist meets Sam’s stomach, forcing him to keen forward and suck in a breath. “ _Give_ a _damn_ ,” with the emphasis of his words, he takes up a nearby tire wrench and lets it fly wherever he pleases. It strikes Sam’s skin and bones with a cracking sound. “About you.”

He steps back, breathing a harsh sigh. “And frankly, neither do I. But you’re going to pay, do you understand?”

Sam’s head falls forward, his hair draping over his face like a shaggy curtain. Cole comes close, digging his fingers into Sam’s injured shoulder and earning a grunt of pain. “I will beat you like the dog you are, and put you down like an animal. So start talking. Tell me where Dean-o is.”

Sam remains firmly silent, aggravating the last of Cole’s nerves. “Fine then,” he watches a bruise form in violent shades on Sam’s cheek, “guess I’ll have to break your knees before I get a word out of ya. Don’t worry; I’ve got plenty of time.” He comes in close and grabs a fistful of hair, holding Sam’s head up like a trophy. “You, not so much.”

A cellphone rings not far from where they are. Sam’s eyes stay locked forward as Cole sighs, releasing his grip on him. “Excuse me,” he sighs, pulling a silver flip phone out of his pocket and snapping it open, giving Sam a warning look.

“Hey, I’m in the middle of something.” Cole frowns, beginning to pace. “No, no, I’m okay. Everything’s going great. I know, but I’ll see you soon. Why don’t you—don’t, don’t. Why don’t you put him on the phone? I wanna talk to him.”

His voice suddenly changes pitch as Sam’s head drops toward his chest. “Hey, buddy. How’re you doing?”

The sound of Cole’s voice changing to such a lighthearted one, followed by the squeak of a higher-pitched, childlike voice snaps Sam out of a daze. He can see Cole’s boots while he rifles through his tools, metal clanging ringing in his ears.

Sam’s shoulders shake as a harsh snap of laughter escapes him. He keeps laughing, the sound bubbling up from his bruised ribs as he raises his head to see Cole glaring daggers at him with a phone to his ear.

Sam’s lips split in a feral grin, blood trickling from his nose over his teeth and dripping down his chin. “Y’know what, let me call you back, buddy.”

His phone snaps shut with enough force to crack it in half. Surprisingly, it doesn’t fall apart. “Something funny, Sammy?” Cole’s voice is a low growl as all other sounds cease. Sam chuckles through his teeth, tasting the metallic tang on his tongue.

“A family man hung up on my brother,” the look in Sam’s eyes when he spits blood is wildly different than what Cole remembers. “You’re more obsessed than I am. Dean’s a monster and you’ve got a wife and kid at home. Are you giving them up for petty revenge?”

“What, you think you’re any better, _Sammy?_ ” Cole’s boots scrape against the ground as he approaches. “What makes you think you’ve got any goddamned right to insult my family like that, psycho?”

“Not anymore,” Sam shakes his head, his tongue flicking out to lick his split lip gingerly. “I’m the reason he’s a demon in the first place. I’m no better than him now.”

Cole raises a skeptical brow and shakes his head. “Sammy, boy I hate to break it to ya, but you are one sick puppy.”

Sam’s lips split into a grin when Cole raises the pliers in his hand, plucked from his metal toolkit. “Let me go or you’ll regret it,” he warns, spitting blood in Cole’s direction, who scowls when spit and blood land on his pants.

“Pretty words,” Cole leans in close with a snarl, “but empty. You’re as soulless as your brother is.”

“Don’t I know it.” Sam’s eyes darken and for a moment, Cole swears they look black in the light.

~

Shadows cast dark circles in the ghost of a bar room, etching over the lines of Crowley’s face with a creeping sinister drape under his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t had the best of both worlds, but it’s not like Dean to start caring, now is it.

“You did _what!?”_ Crowley’s voice rises to a yell, furious rage simmering beneath it. “I _told_ you what to do! You were to kill the cheating wife and make good on the deal. _Not_ kill the man who you’re _supposed_ to be working for!” The two men in suits, demons, standing behind him glance at each other with uncertainty.

Dean huffs at him and raises his brows. “Guy was a loser and a douche. What’s it matter to you?”

“What’s it matter to _me?_ ” Crowley’s voice raises an octave. “You _ruined_ a deal, Dean Winchester! Now I don’t get Lester Morris’ soul. Here I was misled into thinking you were my bestie after all this time we spent together. And you know what, I’ve had enough of you and your behavior. I’m done with you—you’re moose’s problem now.”

Dean snorts. “Not anymore.” Crowley gives him a look that he doesn’t explain.

“You sort out whatever you have with moose. Tell him I send my regards.” Crowley looks over to his shoulder to the remnants of black smoke, his goons gone in a flash. He scowls at Dean, snapping his fingers and gone in an instant.

~

“It’s really disgusting, you know, to have a brother like yours.” Cole circles around him like a vulture at the bloodied effigy of Sam strapped to a chair. “You know what’s even worse? To have someone who thinks of you the way your big bro does.”

Blood trickles in a sluiced line from Sam’s nose. He sucks in a breath, the reek of blood in the air. Cole hasn’t even gotten started. “Let this continue,” he shudders over stinging breaths, “Dean won’t be the one you need to worry about.”

“Is that a threat, Sammy?”

An unholy noise rumbles out of Sam’s throat. “It’s a _promise._ ”

The leather cuffs, once holding Sam down, have become worn with his struggled attempts to break free. Scratches from his fingernails run deep, coming close to the metal buckles where they’ve been snapped open, allowing Sam’s fist to sink into Cole’s jaw with a satisfying crunch.

While Cole stumbles back, Sam frees himself with an inhuman strength and slams into Cole like a bolt of thunder. One moment he sees a flying blur and the next he’s meeting the wooden ground with his face, his nose breaking from the sheer force. Sam’s hands are on him in a flash, beating in the thick features of his face with bruised, bloodied fists without reservation.

The rage circulating in his stomach strings itself in his brain and forces his fists. Sam doesn’t make note of when to stop when Cole’s face collapses under his fists as he snarls with an embittered rage.

Cole gasps and gurgles beneath him, blood mixing with air he chokes on by the time Sam can wrestle up the urge to stop. Ice poisons his veins, swirling the drain of a frozen tundra that has become him. If he had the energy to care, surely he would note wrongdoing in being caught in a situation like this.

No shred of conscience comes to him. Not when he pulls himself up and leaves Cole unconscious and bloody on the floor of his toy box. In his mind, the name is sneered like a smear campaign with no end in sight, only a goal of viciousness that must be carefully restrained.

As he staggers out of the wooden shed, his phone, recovered from the floor with a careless pluck amongst the floorboards, starts to buzz.

It vibrates in his hand like a calling to the great beyond. He turns on the display, finding a text message from an unknown sender—it’s clearly Crowley, of all people.

His hands do not shake. For all he knows, he could’ve easily killed Cole then and there. Reflecting on this while reading a huffy message from Crowley doesn’t let the message sink in. What he does have in front of him is a name of a place and it’s the place where Dean will be.

‘ _Hurry up,’_ the message reads loud and clear, _‘before I deal with him myself.’_

He takes Cole’s car, figuring Cole won’t need it anytime soon and follows the directions offered by his phone. It’s the same place as before, with an insistence behind the words that he can practically hear in Crowley’s voice, boiling over in a disquieted snap of anger.

Luckily for him, wherever he ended up by Cole’s doing isn’t so far from where Dean will be. Soon, he figures, he’ll have to meet his brother in person. Face to face.

There should be joy where there is nothing. He is as empty as the moment he lost his brother and for once, he doesn’t question why.

~

Dean fiddles with the piano at his disposal when Crowley’s disappeared and left him to himself. As if the words actually meant something, like a vague semblance of a threat, which is far beyond the statement of Crowley shaking in his own skin when raising his voice to a monster much bigger than he is.

He doesn’t mourn the loss. Of course not, given that Crowley was sure to leave soon enough, without so much as more than simply ignoring him. Dean had to speed things along just to get him to leave a little faster, but once the fire had been lit, the parasite finally dropped. Now in exchange he can breathe dry, dusty air of a closed bar and sit at a piano without a glass to quench a burning thirst.

Now that’s the real tragedy at hand.

Dean waits and waits, the stranger possessing Sam’s phone still fresh in his mind with such a simple threat. Now he waits for him to go through with it, whoever it is, to rid himself of the urge to start shredding people into decorative ribbons.

His wait isn’t long when the rumble of a car engine tells him who’s coming. Dirt crunches under shoes outside by the time he smells the dirt in the air. Though that all changes when he recognizes the weight of footsteps approaching the door, knowing the strange, almost removed feeling by the parts left behind that are still familiar to him.

“I thought you were puppy chow,” Dean comments, mindlessly thumbing over the ivory keys. “That new admirer of mine sure thought so. So why’re you here, Sammy?”

A gun is pointed at his head. Of course it is. Dean refuses to feign surprise when Sam is far too calm, facing off against him like he’s practiced it before. “There’s a way to cure you, Dean. You don’t have to live like this.”

The speech sounds so practiced it’s offensive. “Is that all you really think of me, Sammy? That I’m some monster to be tamed?” He turns on his heels to face Sam, in all his gun-wielding unusual calm. He blinks, showing off the dark tarry pits of his eyes with a smirk. “I _was_ your brother. You had that part right, but now it’s time to let go, Sam. You’ve gotta get over the fact that your brother isn’t here anymore.”

Sam, to his credit, loads the gun with a click. “You’re standing right in front of me, Dean.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

A grenade breaks through a nearby window and pops once it splatters against the floor, hissing with a burning gas leaking from it. Sam starts to choke where he stands as Dean guides himself out, no longer caring for the gun-slinging drama that he’s somehow gotten himself involved in.

Sam’s coughing can be heard from the outside when a sprightly figure rolls in with a gun drawn and Dean’s really looking for the humor in this. First a dopey, lovesick brother to come calling for him, clearly ignoring the note left behind that was more of a courtesy than actual concern.

Breaking through a haze of tear gas, Dean turns to find a gun pointed at him and a figure walking toward him, hunched like he’s approaching a wild animal. Good thing he’s got an inkling of whatever the hell he thinks he’s doing.

“Wow, it’s really you,” the man spits, his face an ugly conglomerate of purples and reds. Looks like Sam or a frying pan got too comfortable with him.

“Have we met?”

“We talked on the phone.”

“Right, right. You’re the guy who’s supposed to put a bullet in Sammy’s brain.” Dean huffs to himself, a slow smile starting to creep across his face. “Did you miss?”

His ugly face contorts with a look of rage. “I had a better idea. I figured if I let your bro escape, he’d lead me right back to you and all I’d have to do is tag along.”

“Feel free to correct me, but it looks like you lost that battle.” Dean makes a sweeping gesture at the man’s face, now fully visible as the tear gas clears and smirks as the man refuses to back down, even with as mottled as his face is. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch if Sammy let you go.”

The man ignores him thoroughly. “Now here we are, finally. _Dean Winchester._ ”

“Great,” Dean follows into the circling that the other man steps into, not all that impressed by the idiot trying to get the upper hand. For now he’ll play along, seeing as for all he knows Sam’s either going to finish the job or it’s going to be a toss up for what will happen. There is a certainty, and that would be this idiot isn’t going to make it out alive. If he does, by the breadth of a hair. Dean feels particularly unforgiving. “A groupie.”

The guy laughs. “You remember me?”

Dean rolls his eyes to himself, playing along. “Yeah, yeah, you’re that guy… From that thing… Of course I don’t.” He shrugs not all that concerned at how the rage courses through the other man like a streak of lightning down a tree. He is electrified and _livid_ now.

“Nyack, New York. June twenty-first, 2003.”

Dean shakes his head, raising a brow. “That supposed to ring a bell?”

The man’s lower lip is trembling. Maybe it’s from the bruising there but with the fury in his eyes, he looks like a shaken leaf. “It was the night you gutted and murdered a man by the name of Edward Trenton. He was my father.”

Dean considers the information and quickly forgets it. “Okay.”

“Okay? _Okay?_ ”

“Well hey, I’m not saying I didn’t slice and dice your old man, but I’m just saying he certainly wasn’t the first and he’s not the last.” Dean stops, giving the guy a once-over. “They all just kinda get blended up.”

The man’s face twists with righteous fury and all of that bottled up anguish he must’ve been holding over himself for years now. “I saw you, that night after you let me live—that was dumb, real dumb.” He slithers closer with the gun in his hands, never faltering. “I spent half my life waiting for this moment. I’ve played out this moment a thousand times in my head. I know how it ends.” A smile reaches across his broken face in a flash of irony.

He takes another step forward, coming closer. “And I know all about you, Dean-o. And you’re good. _Real_ good. But you see, I’m _better._ ”

“Prove it.” Dean holds out his hands, beckoning. “Take a shot.”

He stops, his self-satisfied smirk corrupted. “Nah, that’s not payback. _This_ is payback.” He drops his gun, letting it skitter to the side with a swift kick. From his side he unsheathes a wicked-looking knife and before Dean can comment how cute it is for him to try, he lunges forward with a blind swipe.

Dean jumps back, taking little to no effort to avoid the next few swings aimed at any part of his body as he watches the other man with ease. It takes less than a minute before the man makes one wrong move that forfeits his knife and Dean seizes him by the ankle, twisting it back and pulling out a gun, shoving his attacker away with nothing more than a push.

“Y’know,” Dean turns his back to him, holding up the gun as it clicks and releases the magazine before tossing it aside. “Maybe you’re not as good as you think you are.”

The man howls with anger and holds up his hands in a challenging stance as Dean swings back around. He laughs, tempted to shake his head with either disappointment or disgust. “You know Kung fu?”

The man even has the gall to bare his bloody teeth at him. “I know everything.”

“Well then,” Dean winks at him for maximum impact, thoroughly enjoying at the flinch that seizes through his opponent. “Bring it on.”

As predicted, he lunges again and gets a firsthand experience of being slammed into the chain link fence nearby the graffiti-covered brick walls. When he bounces back Dean’s waiting for him, blocking his hits with ease as with each hit, the man gets more and more rabid.

He roars in frustration when none of his hits land until he’s sprawled out on the ground, his back facing Dean who approaches him like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“Now, what did you think was gonna happen? You were gonna...what, come down here, after the load you took from good ol’ Sam, and say ‘my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die’?” Dean snorts as he leans down to get closer to the man who pants, blood staining the pavement and completely disarmed. “How sad.”

To his credit, the man has another trick up his sleeve and he uses it, swiping a blade that catches Dean in the face before he’s back on his feet and lunging again. Not liking this trick, Dean grabs him by the arm and then by the neck with a strangling hold, tired of playing these little games.

He lets out a broken choke as Dean’s fingers tighten. “You’re pathetic. Don’t you have any idea of who you’re messing with?” For full effect he leans in close, watching as the man’s eyes widen with confusion dashed with a bit of horror as the cut on his cheek heals and closes up, disappearing without a trace.

“What _are_ you?”

Dean smirks. “I’m a demon.” His eyes blink to black before he throws him against his getaway car parked not too far from where they fought, watching as he sinks before he strides up to grab him again, this time with the First Blade in hand.

“Do it!” he demands angrily, blood covering over half his face and his bruises from Sam are a lovely shade of lilac purple. His nose looks broken, now that Dean takes the time to notice. “C’mon! _Do it!_ You said you were gonna do it, so get it over with!”

Funny for demands to be coming from the one on the opposite side of the First Blade. But the longer Dean looks at him, the less interested in his blood he is. Besides, whoever he is, he’s close to passing out with how his eyes swim like they’re in a fish bowl.

“Nah.” He drops him and the man falls like a sack of bricks, his head jerking to the side.

As he turns to leave, knowing Sam should be somewhere around here, his leg suddenly crunches and falls under him with cold metal snapping onto his wrist. Holy water splashes him in the face, steaming with an ungodly hiss. Blood pounds in his ears at the prospect of another challenge, especially when he knows who it is with his blade in hand, ready to kill.

Another cuff slaps on his other wrist, the First Blade forced from his hand as he comes face to face with Sam, looking up at him. “It’s over, Dean.”

For the fun of it, Dean hisses at him, his eyes flicking over to the First Blade that Sam collects, pocketing it. Now if only… “What do you think you’re doing, Sammy?”

Sam doesn’t even spare the man a glance. “Get up. We’re leaving.”

Angry as he is for Sam’s dirty tactics, he does find himself interested in that his little brother gives no concern to the man whose face he rearranged. Dean growls at Sam, whose blank face strikes him as odd, if he paid enough attention to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A+ for effort, Cole.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam hauls him into the Impala with little more than a word. Dean talks to fill the silence. “So, did he touch you before he got you dinner? Why’d you break the guy’s face?”

Normally this would be an occasion of trying to understand why Dean would leave, knowing that he’s a demon still getting in the way of that. There should be a burst of relief with the twist in his stomach and something to melt the cold. There is supposed to be a reason for all of this.

“Get in,” Sam commands, and quite roughly shoves him into the back seat, locking the door behind him. The reason for the occasion and the manhandling appears literally right in front of him as Sam disappears to the front of the car, where of course, Crowley is there.

“Moose,” Crowley extends his warmest of welcomes in that grating yowl of his. “Good to see you’re in one piece.” His hands flicker to Sam’s sides, searching. When he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, his eyes narrow and his expression changes. “You remember our little deal, right?”

Sam’s eyes him with little regard. “Changed my mind.” He raises a brow at Crowley’s goons flanking him, unimpressed. “If you had cooperated, maybe I would’ve followed our deal.”

“What do you think you’re doing, moose?”

“Exactly what you would do. Don’t look so surprised.” The malice that slips from him should be concerning, but it’s just as cold as the rest of him is, left in the shadow of feeling. Having Dean back was supposed to make him happy, but with Dean and his black eyes in the back of the Impala, a gnawing twist in his gut refuses to leave. “You took him from me without a word. Next time I won’t be as forgiving.”

Crowley’s sneer grows uglier. “Give me that blade, moose. You don’t know who you’re talking to.”

Sam remembers the flicker of recognition to this feeling—the same one when he dragged Dean back to the bunker, drained and without anything but the snarled thoughts in his head. The frequency at which they crawl into the forefront of his mind should be alarming, but he feels...nothing.

There was once a time he vaguely remembers, going something like this. Oh well.

“And I have my brother, cuffed in the back of the Impala. Those cuffs aren’t going to hold him long.” Sam steps back, not missing the shocked look of betrayal Crowley should really anticipate from them. Of course he would be betrayed—Sam is a _Winchester._

Crowley’s mouth opens and closes, gaping with speechless indignation. “How dare you, moose! I do all of this as a kind gesture, a symbol of rekindling our relationship, and this is how you repay me?” His demons shift like they’re going to attack and Sam anticipates it, but knowing Crowley and how his eyes flicker to the backseat of the Impala every now and then, nothing will happen.

“You don’t want to rekindle our relationship. You just want me to clean up your mess.” Sam turns and leaves him, with just a toss over his shoulder to know that Crowley and his demons are gone.

The driver’s side door slams shut as Sam packs himself in. Immediately he takes a look at his surroundings, noting the abundance of trash as he reaches to open the passenger door. “Dean, what is all this? What the hell?”

Dean shrugs from the back seat. “It’s just a car, Sammy.” His eyes flash in the rearview mirror. Sam shakes his head. Dean grins.

“You don’t mean that. It’s your car, Dean. You love this car.” Sam shoves out the refuse and other litter, consisting of wrappers, take-out containers, and other questionable items.

“You don’t mean that,” Dean parrots back, his teeth still bared as he stretches with a grin. “Look, if we want to play pretend to each other, at least try to _sound_ believable. You don’t even act convincing.” He shuffles in his seat, rattling the cuffs with a snort. “After all, little brother’s not on his best behavior as of late. I know what you did, Sammy. And boy, if I thought I was the bad guy, then you proved me wrong.”

Sam freezes. “What are you talking about?” He starts up the ignition, lucky enough to remember he has a spare set of keys he found in Dean’s room at the bunker.

“Lester, Sammy! Don’t you remember good ol’ douchebag Lester? Or, how about when you used him to try to find me?” Dean leans forward from the back, resting his chin on the back of the front seat. “I know what you did, Sammy. You’re more depraved than I am—what you did was low, Sam. Real low.”

Sam narrows his eyes, refusing to turn back to Dean. “I needed to find you. He made the deal on his own.”

Dean snorts with laughter, cackling. “So you think that using an innocent man to come find me was okay? How screwed up are you, Sammy? ‘Cause let me tell you, he was a real asshole right up until I did him and the rest of the world a favor and stomped him out.” Dean squirms some more in the back seat, his cuffs rattling with strain. “Left a grease stain behind. Stupid fuck. Why kill a man just for good ol’ monster Dean? You know I’m gone, Sam.”

“You showed mercy to Cole,” Sam says as he pulls out of the bar parking lot and heads back to the road. “You’re still my brother. You kept him alive even though you could’ve killed him.”

“Yeah, and you sure did, didn’t ya? You pummeled him into hamburger, Sam. Hate to break it to you, but you’re not the more ethical one of us. Funny, since I thought I didn’t have a moral compass. What I did wasn’t mercy. He’s gonna sit there in his failure, knowing that he wasted his life training to hunt me down and kill me. But he couldn’t even do that.” He leans back, pleased with himself as he relays the story. “Mercy is killing him. And you know that just as well as I do, seeing what little parting gifts you left him.”

Sam’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “So?”

Dean gets a taste of the cold that’s wrapped around Sam and he jolts back, subdued for now. He looks incredulous, forcing Sam to pay attention to the road and ignore the laughter tinged with roughness, perfecting Dean’s appeal of a beast.

Sam turns his bruised cheek to the window, staring out as Dean leans forward again, his voice deadly quiet.

“I warned you to let me go, Sammy. Now I’m going to kill you.”

Sam ignores him, though the chill that runs through him is the only normal he’s felt in quite some time.

His phone rings beside him after falling from his pocket. The First Blade is at his feet, where Dean can’t reach for it even if he tries. His phone keeps ringing as he glances over to check who it is, with the name _Cas_ flashing on his screen.

“Aren’t ya gonna get that, Sammy?” Dean calls, looking out the windows with nothing but disinterest. “Don’t wanna keep whoever it is waiting. Hey, does Cas know?”

“No. He doesn’t.” Castiel’s call goes unanswered. By the time his phone lights up with another call, he doesn’t take the time to text him a reply, ignoring it entirely.

Text messages buzz on Sam’s phone. He never answers.

“Well hell, you’re all kinds of messed up, aren’t you,” Dean murmurs aloud, his eyes black once more. “What happened to you, Sam?”

~

Trees stretch for as far as the eye can see on the rural road heading into the mountains. Castiel can’t remember exactly where they are, though he’s certain Hannah knows as she follows the map they picked up from a tourist spot.

“This is strange,” Castiel comments aloud, staring at his phone with a cinched expression. “Sam isn’t picking up. He hasn’t spoken to me since he learned about the murder in Wisconsin.”

Hannah shakes her head gently from the side, trying to concentrate on not getting nauseous. “Perhaps Sam Winchester has learned how to deal with his own issues. You should wait for him to speak to you instead of concerning yourself.”

Castiel’s eyes stick to the road but his mind is elsewhere. “No. I need to speak with Sam. I need to know if he’s found Dean.”

Hannah sighs from the passenger’s seat, staring out at the trees passing by. “I understand your concern for his well-being, Castiel. We spoke of this. But you are still ill.” A map sits unfolded in her lap, the right way up after realizing about half an hour ago that it was upside-down. “Adina is still out there. She will harm more of our brothers and sisters if we allow her to roam as she pleases.”

Castiel takes his eyes off the road to meet hers, his expression weary, though serious. “I am aware of the danger Adina presents. She is not baseless in her attacks—we are responsible for Daniel’s death. She is in the process of grieving and to seek her now while Sam and Dean need me could be disastrous.”

“You are so—fixated on the Winchesters,” she accuses sternly, jabbing her finger down on the map as she pinpoints where they are. Her eyes seek out everything but him. “Castiel, our brothers and sisters are dying without us. We must stop her. The Winchesters will survive, as they have until now. Heaven needs you, Castiel. _We_ need you.”

Castiel’s fingers grip tightly on the steering wheel before loosening. “I know. You asked for my help and I will give it as I am able to. Hannah, you must trust me. You went to Metatron because you wanted to help me,” his voice lowers then, “in a similar way, I must help Sam with Dean. I owe them that.”

“You owe them nothing,” Hannah shakes her head firmly, moving back and forth between looking out the window and the map, a frown unfurling on her face. “They have used you, Castiel, for so long. I know you consider them as ‘friends’, but those are human values. Metatron knows where your grace is and I want you to get it back. Is Sam Winchester aware that you’re growing weaker every day?”

“Hannah,” Castiel calls in a warning, signaling the end of the conversation. He glances over to a map, utterly lost without direction. “They are my friends. If I do not get my grace back, then so be it. I have more important matters to attend to, such as helping my brothers and sisters recover from what I have done to them. I am more concerned with making things right.”

She nods, solemn. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He glances around, trying to find any familiar surroundings. “Hannah, where are we? I thought we passed a state line an hour ago.”

Hannah fumbles with the map, not a good sign as she murmurs to herself, her fingers splaying over the parchment before she looks up with a helpless expression. “I...I don’t know how to read it.”

With one look to the nearly empty gas tank and a blue sign up ahead advertising food and gas stations, he figures it’s best to follow the signs.

~

Dean knows no bounds as Sam walks him through the bunker, quipping and cursing down the hall to the panic room where the good ol’ iron chair is more than happy to see him.

“You really wanna go through with this?” Dean stumbles into place in the devil’s trap painted on the floor, collapsing into a chair with a rough shove of encouragement from Sam. As Sam straps him in and decorates him with chains, he finds the need to fill the silence between them. “I mean, can you feel anything, Tin Man? You haven’t said a word since we got here. Makes me think you don’t love me anymore.” He blows a kiss to Sam’s back as the door shuts behind him, the heavy locks clanging into place.

Holy water sprinkles over the floor inside of the devil’s trap. Sam raises a brow at him and Dean mimics him, waiting for a response. He gets one. “Shut up.”

Dean makes a remark about how cold Sam is, ignored when Sam walks over to a cooler sitting on the floor, clearly waiting to be noticed as he props it open and reaches in, pulling out a bag of what can only be blood.

A rosary dangles, almost tauntingly, from Sam’s fingers. “Oh no,” Dean feigns horror, rolling his eyes. “You didn’t, did you? Sammy, why are you even doing this to your big brother? You know that’s not gonna work on me anyway.”

Sam ignores him. “It’s worth a shot.” Speaking of shots, he grabs a hefty-looking syringe as Dean’s skin crawls, gone unnoticed in favor of glaring his brother down. “You can make this easier on yourself, you know.”

“Ah, what’s the fun in that?” He knows there’s a flask of holy water in Sam’s back pocket. Asshole. “C’mon, Sammy, you’re stone cold. What’s with that? Don’t get all sob story on me—I don’t really care.” He rolls his neck, cracking his vertebra. “But I’ll say you’ve got me curious.”

Sam fills the syringe with blood, the rosary still in hand. His eyes are dead and cold, strange as they glint in the light hanging overhead.

“You know I don’t like shots,” Dean says as Sam steps into the devil’s trap, earning some response for once.

Dean’s lips split into a sneer as he snaps at Sam when he comes close enough, roaring at him. He starts to laugh at his own antics until he realizes Sam hasn’t flinched once, and then realizes there is something definitely wrong with Sam, staring at him like he’s nothing more than a nuisance.

“I don’t like demons,” Sam counters, right before stabbing the needle into Dean’s extended arm and pressing down the plunger. Dean hisses and spits curses while Sam steps back, watching blood well up on his arm before a rush of lightning grabs him by surprise.

He snorts, thrashing in place as the pain increases to nothing like he’s ever felt before, bleeding his eyes black as a snarl rips free from him. His head throws up toward the ceiling as his teeth crush together, split seconds of agony breaking through his bones.

When it calms down, he throws Sam a deadly glare. “Hey, you wanna find out if you have a heart?” His lips are coiled into a feral sneer. “Come a little closer and I’ll find it for you.”

“No thanks.” Another syringe full of blood as Dean clacks his teeth when Sam comes close, to the disappointing reaction of nothing. Sam stabs it in his arm with the same mercilessness of before, watching Dean’s face as the agony rears its ugly head again and tears him to shreds from the inside out.

“Where’s my doe-eyed overgrown puppy of a brother?” Dean talks as soon as he can see clearly, swaying in place with signs of vertigo. He blinks as he stares up at the light, spaced out from the pain. “Who’re you and what have you done to Sammy, huh?”

“I’m still your brother.” Sam refills the syringe as Dean waits, the rosary dangling from his fingers like a broken tree branch. “It just hurts you more than it hurts me.”

“Never thought I’d say it, but you’re one sick puppy. Why bother? You don’t know if this is gonna kill me. You really wanna find out the hard way?”

“Worth a try.” The nonchalance is insulting.

“Man, something went wrong with you. What’s all this for, then? A merit badge?”

“It’ll keep you in line. I want my brother back.”

“How do you even _know_ what you want? You’re a machine!” Dean hisses through another stab of blood and woozily sways, panting and growling as the blood starts to work on him. As another bite of blood hits him, he grows angrier. “You don’t have a brother, Sam! So stop acting like you care, ‘cause you don’t!”

“I can’t just stop, Dean.” Sam’s voice is cold and he recognizes it too when he says it. “I have to try.”

“Yeah, you can. Do you know why I got as far away from you as I could?”

Sam doesn’t answer. Dean in turn growls some more, his voice becoming more and more animalistic the longer time passes with the more injections he receives, around ten when he stops. That is, until Sam is interrupted by the buzz of a cellphone. He retrieves it, frowning before he goes back to his ice box and pulls out a table of salt and sets it down on a nearby folding chair, meeting Dean’s eyes and conveying a warning.

Dean would snort if he wasn’t so busy growling at him. Sam excuses himself from the room, closing the heavy door behind himself as he answers a call.

“ _Sam. Is everything all right? Where are you? We’re heading to the bunker now.”_

“What? I’m fine—everything’s fine. Dean’s a demon, though.” He searches around the pantry, certain that Dean’s harmless at this point. Disappointingly, he only finds a jar of peanut butter and half a loaf of sliced bread from one of his more recent motel visits. With nothing else, this will have to do.

“ _Dean’s a_ what? _”_ Noise crackles through the receiver as Sam travels up the hallway to the ground floor. _“Where is he, Sam? Crowley just appeared and told me to deal with Dean. Is he possessed?”_

He takes a butter knife from the drawer nearby and gets to work, spreading a healthy amount of peanut butter on two slices of bread. “No, he’s not possessed. It’s Dean. Crowley turned him into a demon and got tired of him.”

“ _..._ _Sam, you sound unusually calm for this situation. Are you all right?”_ Castiel’s voice lowers, concern leaking through heavily. _“Is there someone there?”_

“No, Cas, I’m fine. Dean’s fine. I’m working on curing him right now. Just go back to what you were doing.” He holds the phone between his ear and shoulder, picking up his newly made sandwich. “I’m just relieved, is all. Exhausted, but I’ve got Dean back.”

“ _I’ll be there soon. Please be careful.”_ Sam makes a noncommittal noise, biting into his sandwich as Castiel hangs up.

The bunker is too quiet for his liking. Without the muffled shouts of Dean to keep him company, Sam is immediately on alert. The First Blade is still on him, which prevents Dean from getting to it, but that’s not enough to stop him. With however many treatments he’s done this far, Dean should be getting closer to human. But Dean’s words still ring in his head—what if it doesn’t work?

What if he kills him?

He shakes his head. All of this is normal. It’s part of the relief and the unresolved grief of Dean disappearing and coming back. As a demon, which is awful, but not unavoidable. Dean will either be fixed or he’ll die trying.

When he makes the trip back down to the dungeon, every hair on the back of his neck stands. The air isn’t right—he can’t explain it but he _knows_ something is wrong when he comes close to the door, gun drawn from his belt and dismissing any phantom of a thought that pulling a gun on his brother would be cruel.

“Dean?”

The door to the dungeon is wide open. _Shit._

“Dean!” Sam pulls the door open and his stomach drops, squeezing tightly when he comes face to face with an empty room. The chains that once held Dean back are on the floor, his handcuffs broken and lying in pieces.

With the suddenness of the discovery, the lights shut off, almost too eerily close to the time of Sam’s discovery to be anything close to coincidence.

No, this is _intent._ “Dean, stop!” He whirls on his heels and leads himself out of the room, remembering the First Blade hooked to his belt. If Dean wants to get it, he’ll have to find him first. “Don’t make me do this!”

His voice rings down the hall as he reaches the regular floor, the lights off and silence drapes over the atmosphere. Gun in hand, he walks close to the walls, waiting for any sign of Dean. “Dean, this isn’t who you are.”

“It sure is, Sammy!” Dean calls from his left, off in the distance and muffled by something like a bookcase. “Just ‘cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not me. After all, you still haven’t shared what’s going on with you!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he calls back, firm in his convictions as he travels down the hallway toward the sound. Passing by a broken fire alarm kit with a missing axe and glass scattered on the floor only heightens the adrenaline in his veins. But instead of jittery or nervous, he’s calm.

It’s because it’s his brother. That’s the reason.

“Are you listening to yourself? You’ve got no conscience. You don’t even care if you kill me with your little blood magic tricks!”

“I’m trying to help you, Dean.” He nears a staircase and pauses when he hears heavy footsteps coming for him down the hallway he just abandoned. “You’ve got to let me try.”

“Have you given any thought to what _I_ want? Maybe I don’t want to be fixed!” Dean’s voice is coming closer as Sam scales the nearby staircase to the upper levels as Dean’s footfalls grow louder. “Maybe I don’t wanna be cured!”

“You don’t mean that,” Sam finds himself saying as he presses himself behind a doorway, jogging as Dean bursts into the room that he once occupied. Keeping his gun in his hands, he darts down a hallway, looking for a way to escape.

“I mean that I got as far away from you as I could so I wouldn’t have to deal with you and your whining. But you came and got me anyway, huh? What good was that for when the Sam you were isn’t home?” Dean’s footsteps thud up the stairs as Sam goes on the move again. “What, Sammy, you don’t like the new model? Lean mean Dean? ‘Cause I’m sure not digging whatever pity party you’re throwing for yourself when you can’t even _pretend_ to be upset over me!”

Sam is already climbing down another set of stairs, intent on heading back to the armory past their bedrooms when Dean is close behind him. “Hey, does your little angel friend know what’s going on in your grapefruit? ‘Cause he’d be real interested if he knew, wouldn’t he?”

He gets as far as the kitchen, shielding himself when he hears Dean run past, far too quick for a human. But then again, he hasn’t been for some time. With the gun loaded he waits until Dean gets close, feeling a dull thrum from the First Blade as it picks up on Dean’s presence.

When the coast is clear, he sprints to the bunker’s electrical system, figuring he has better chances there. Dean is hot and fast on his heels, clearly having been anticipated the move as Sam pushes himself harder. He reaches the room first with the thunderous echoes of Dean hot on his trail, slamming the door shut and locking it.

“Hand it over, Sammy!” Dean’s muffled voice breaks through the door as it rattles threateningly. Sam climbs through the fencing to get to the main power generator, flipping the switch before Dean cackles, the door suddenly quiet.

“Real cute, Sam. But you’re not going anywhere. ‘Cause I’m gonna kill you here and now for pissing me off.”

The splintering of wood follows the swing of an axe slamming against the door. It only takes a couple heavy whacks to break a hole through the door and Sam isn’t anywhere close to afraid, holding a gun trained on his brother as he realizes Dean is too quick to shake off entirely.

“Oh, Sammy, you’re breaking my heart,” Dean coos through the hole, meeting his eyes up the muzzle of a gun. “What’s that gonna do to me? Hurt my feelings?”

“They’re engraved with devil’s traps,” Sam gives, finger on the trigger. “You don’t want to do this, Dean.”

The low rumble of a car engine interrupts them both. Distracted, Dean gives ample time for Sam to brace himself, throwing himself and his good shoulder at the door to break it off its hinges and send Dean sprawling back.

He holds a gun on Dean, starting down the hall. “Cas! Get over here, now!”

He underestimates Dean’s willingness to kill him when he finds a hand on his injured shoulder and his back meets the wall with a painful thump. Dean slaps a hand over Sam’s mouth, his eyes black before he blinks, trailing off to the entrance where Castiel presumably is coming from.

“Let’s make a deal, Sammy,” Dean talks lowly, the cuts on his forehead from the door healing as he speaks. “You let me be me, and I’ll play along with your little fantasy family idea. I know you don’t care, but hey, worth a shot.”

Sam narrows his eyes at him, glaring through the heavy hand on his face but not completely tuned out.

“We can still hunt monsters and kill bad guys. Just like the good ol’ days. But first, we need to get rid of our little pest with wings. Unless,” his lips curl into a sneer, “you want me to leave this meatsuit in shreds by the time you juice me up with human blood.”

Castiel is coming close and they both can tell. Dean doesn’t wait for an answer as he steals the First Blade, kicking Sam’s knees out from under him. Sam quickly recovers and shoves him back, catching his breath with a silent glare. Dean holds the blade in his hand, the hilt extended toward Sam. “You know what to do.”

Sam takes the blade, still eying Dean warily as he cuts his palm and Dean grabs it, painting a banishing sigil on the wall.

“Thanks for playing, kiddo.” Dean’s smug grin doesn’t help when Sam’s eyes move away, knowing Castiel’s appearance is imminent. Dean grabs a nearby door to an empty room and flings it open, shoving Sam inside and slamming it shut just as he catches the sound of footsteps.

“Howdy, Cas.” Castiel’s eyes widen. They glow with angelic grace when Dean slams a palm against the sigil, filling the hall with blinding light and the cusp of a startled cry from Castiel wrenched from him stains the air.

When it’s all said and done, Sam jerks open the door. “What have you done?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be gone for a while. Gives us time to talk.” He bares his fangs. “Face to face. I know you don’t have questions, but I sure do, Tin Man.”

Sam glances at his bleeding palm, keeping the First Blade on him. “He’ll raise hell soon enough.”

Dean shrugs, eying the blade in Sam’s hand. He doesn’t try to take it, though. “Then we’ll figure it out when he does. Now,” his eyes glitter dangerously as the emergency power comes on, lighting up the hallway. “Let’s have a brotherly chat later, Sammy. Sleep on it.”

Sam throws a withering stare. “I don’t sleep, Dean.”

Dean’s eyes widen before he smirks. “Well, that’s new.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exit light, enter night.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	5. Chapter 5

“First things first: I keep the First Blade.”

It’s in no certain terms an agreeable arrangement. Dean makes threats that don’t carry much weight and Sam...observes, struck with the absolute lack of anything he feels not just for leaving his brother a demon, but banishing Castiel like that.

“You know that’s not gonna stop me from killing you, Sammy.”

Then he realizes he doesn’t care.

“In the least it’ll give you something to think about.” The lines of Dean’s face cinch into anger. Then soften to humor.

“Whatever happened to you, at least you got a sense of humor from it. Dunno if I like it just yet.” Dean’s eyes slide to Sam’s turned off phone on the table before he gets up, heading into the kitchen.

Dean doesn’t skip a beat. “Where’s all the beer? This ain’t gonna work if there’s no beer!”

“There’s peanut butter and bread,” Sam mutters, examining his phone after snatching it from the table and eventually pocketing it. “Go wild.”

He’s already formulating a plan for what he’ll do with the blood. It’ll keep if properly stored for six months, so he can hold that over Dean’s head. Keeping Dean out of it is another story, but it shouldn’t be too hard. As for the First Blade, he’ll have to make it up as he goes.

“So, what’d Crowley tell ya about us? Spout some shit about ‘The Misadventures of Crowley and Squirrel’ or some bullshit?” Dean talks through a thick mouthful of peanut butter when he reappears, his sandwich more peanut butter than it is bread. “At least I got rid of him before I tore him a new one.”

Sam scoffs. “Hardly. He was begging me to take you back.”

Dean scowls, the impact muffled by a ragged bite of his sandwich. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.” Dean’s eyes keep wandering back to the First Blade, safely within Sam’s grasp. He grumbles under his breath about ungrateful robot brothers before angrily shoving the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. When he swallows it all down, he looks murderous. “Anyway, beer—now. And real food. I’m not doing anything until I get some decent grub in me.”

It’s getting close to nightfall. Well, if they’re going to stock up, they better do it now. “I’m driving.”

“Thought that was _my_ car,” Dean retorts, patting around his waist when his eyes blink into black, realizing his mistake when Sam holds up a set of keys.

“You’ll get it back if you behave. Let’s go.”

“Asshole.”

~

This time it’s Hannah who has to convince him not to take the first route to Heaven he finds and interrogate Metatron. She argues with a valid point—Dean’s behavior is to be expected for a demon. Sam, wherever he was, must have been overwhelmed by him.

It doesn’t soothe his nerves when he ends up in a field in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hannah takes her time driving to him, not used to operating a car and worried, of course, when Castiel calls her with the first payphone he can find.

“Let’s talk about this before we decide on a further plan of action.” Hannah sighs as they find themselves in a seedy motel with a clerk that had a leer in his eyes reserved for her. “We cannot make rash decisions, as you said. Adina’s grace will not hold you for long.”

“Sam hasn’t spoken to me at all. I’m afraid that Dean is holding him hostage and will kill him if I don’t intervene.” Castiel’s eyes narrow to a spot on the wall, trying to forget about the cockroaches skittering under the beds. “I don’t know what more to do. Sam is in danger.”

Hannah rests a tentative hand on his shoulder, as reluctant as he is to stay in this motel. They have no other choice, though returning to Heaven sounds better at this point. “I know you blame yourself for what you could have done, but you couldn’t have known. Sam only told you Dean was a demon before we arrived.”

“It’s not just that. He asked me not to come at all, claiming that he had it handled.” Castiel’s face scrunches, confusion etched in stone. “I can’t imagine any reason why he would do it unless he was forced to say it. I do know that the blood used in the sigil...it was his.”

Hannah bites the inside of her cheek, startled into standing shortly after taking a seat on the corner of their shared bed when a cockroach starts climbing her leg. She shakes off her pant leg long after the bug is gone, unease chipping off her usual calm. “What then would make you believe Metatron would have the answer?”

Castiel shakes his head and cups his chin in his hand, his shoulders hanging dejectedly. “Sam hasn’t been acting normally in this situation. Not since Dean was killed.”

“What is ‘normal’, then?” Hannah comes to sit beside him, twitching every now and then when she glances over the edge of the bed. “As much as you want answers, we must think logically. Sam Winchester lost his brother in a violent manner. Becoming aware that his brother had been turned into a demon is reason to not act normal. It is a horrible fate for them both.” She offers an encouraging smile. “Please don’t blame yourself for this, Castiel.”

“There’s little else to do,” he sighs and stares at the floor, an ugly blue-gray-green mix that looks like it’s from the eighties. “I need to speak to Metatron. Even if he has nothing to do with it, I must know.”

Hannah frowns at him but chooses wisely not to argue, trying to understand his reasons. The sudden change in heart in speaking to Metatron would be appreciated if it were for his sake, but once again, Castiel chooses the Winchesters over himself.

She can’t fathom what would be so compelling to do so. Then again, if asked now, she would not hesitate to sacrifice herself for Castiel.

But, a dark thought slithers into her mind like the cockroaches darting across the floor, would she do the same for her other brothers and sisters?

The immediate answer is _yes_ , but given time, a sting of guilt starts to form.

She does not like Earth.

~

Dean insists on going by himself. Sam knows better than to let him raid a liquor store. They end up on a compromise and head back to the bunker with more liquor than either of them could drink in a year. It doesn’t stop Dean from trying. “You gonna share what happened, or am I just gonna keep guessing?”

Sam shakes his head, numbed to any sort of sting from an attempted insult. Dean’s tried. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Why do you care?”

“Well, the way I see it, normal people sleep. And you are the farthest from normal there is. If we’re gonna be doing the family business, you gotta be sharp.” Dean collapses into a chair noisily, unconcerned with how it squeaks and groans with the force. “I’m not waiting on your ass.”

“I’m fine, Dean,” Sam doesn’t sound it, but it doesn’t matter. In his hands he has two opened beers, handing one off to Dean. For all Dean’s whining, he’s thankfully silent when he grabs the beer from Sam’s hand with a rough tug, tipping it back like it’ll give him three inches below the belt.

Sam leaves his own beer untouched, watching Dean from the corner of his eye when his brother shoots forward, hissing and spitting and coughing, the beer shattering on the floor with a jarring commotion.

Dean’s eyes are black when he whips his head to glare daggers at him, furious. “You bastard!” Sam’s already laughing as he chokes, steam rising from his throat and hands as he claws at himself. “I’ll kill you!”

He snickers as Dean roars at him, taking a swallow of his own beer. “Mm. Salty.”

“I take it back,” Dean all but chews gravel with how rough his voice sounds, steam hissing from his mouth with every word. “I don’t give a shit about you. I’ll make your entrails into a fucking Christmas gift for Crowley you steaming sack of shit!”

Sam palms his backside, where Dean almost forgets he’s got a flask of holy water. “Good luck with that.”

Dean growls and stomps past him to grab another beer when Sam calls after him. “There aren’t any more cold ones.”

“I will fucking _end you_.”

He reappears from the kitchen, still bitter and with his tray of leftover takeout stolen from the fridge. “If you ever need help sleeping, I can knock you out for a night.”

Sam grabs his laptop, his fingers gravitating toward his phone as he starts it up, ignoring Dean all the while. As Dean mutters sourly about his lukewarm beer over every sip, stopping once to grab a bottle of whiskey to drink alongside it, Sam scours the web, not really paying attention to the news articles littering his homepage.

His eyes skim over a journalistic article detailing a rise in diagnoses of insanity and schizophrenia-related deaths, the first to catch his attention. An Oklahoma-based study, according to the article, with a related link to an article about strange lights reported in rural neighborhoods.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam pushes his laptop over, keeping a firm hand on it just in case Dean gets any ideas. “Looks like our first case.”

“What? Already?” Dean squints at the screen and cradles his beer. “Am I not allowed to enjoy a beer? No.”

Sam resists the urge to stare at him like he’s an idiot. He sure sounds like one at the moment. “Not now. Let’s head out tomorrow. Do something before I decide bringing you here was a waste.”

“Sam, I will kill you.”

Sam doesn’t even raise his gaze from his computer screen. “There’s more than salt in the kitchen, Dean.”

Dean goes to his whiskey at that, disgusted, only to find the lid comes off easily. He sniffs it and curls his lips in a snarl. “I hate you more when you’re not pretending to be normal.”

Sam looks up, closing the lid. “Get used to it.” He pauses, considering. “I have a demon for a brother. How am I supposed to act?”

Dean shakes his head in disappointment. “Like you’re not pretending to be the scarecrow. I can see right through you, Tin Man. How long are you gonna keep it up? Aren’t I your big brother, Sammy?” He snorts at his own joke. “Demon version, but whatever butters your pancakes.”

“It’s not funny, Dean.” Sam grabs his laptop and excuses himself, dismissing Dean’s call as he moves to the hallway.

“Aw, come on! You gotta admit that you expected this when you threw me into the car and said ‘hey, let’s pretend to be brothers’!”

“I’m going to bed.” Sam stops by the entrance to the hall. “Get ready for tomorrow.”

“But you don’t even sleep!” Dean leans over to Sam’s leftover beer, sniffing it before he catches the jagged reek of salt and hisses to himself.

~

When Dean wakes it’s to Sam standing over him with an annoyed look on his face. “Get up. It’s time to get moving if we’re gonna get there by tonight.”

“Why don’t I just rip your throat out with my teeth.” Dean groans and rolls over on his cheap motel bed in an even shittier motel just outside Oklahoma City. “That’s not a bad idea.”

A heavy duffel bag promptly falls on his back, ammunition amongst other metal things crashing together when it lands. Dean sits up and rolls out of bed, already keen to the fact his black eyes mean nothing to Sam 2.0, but he can still try.

Sam’s brows are knit together in the portrayal of a concerned brother standing over Dean, but as he goes to his own duffel bag, not quite packed with various guns, knives, and miscellaneous items sitting on the bed, the expression disintegrates. As soon as his back is turned, Dean knows Sam’s not giving the effort to fake it for that long.

All it takes it one hand in his bag to rifle through what’s there before he’s disappointed. “Where is it?” He asks like he doesn’t know, but he knows exactly where it is, strapped to Sam’s belt. Somewhere nearby, at least.

Sam makes a noise of acknowledgment but doesn’t answer as he loads a magazine and it clicks into place. “You don’t need it. We’re going to St. Vincent’s.” His head nods to his open laptop, where faint voices of a police scanner can be heard. “Reports of witchcraft along with the newest cases of insanity. Weird lights, floating candles. Probably a ghost.”

“Anything else? Or is this a drive-by salt and burn?”

“Nothing’s in the local news about recent deaths or famous ghosts besides mental hospital patients. The reports have been spanning for the past two months. One source claimed it was a Satanic coven moving into town.”

So he may not care, but he’s not that naive. “And?”

Sam sighs like he’s explaining to a child. “While you were busy sleeping, I contacted the guy who wrote the article. He told me that there wasn’t any proof, but some symbols spray painted on the walls throughout the site. Currently there are no living witnesses.”

Dean abandons his duffel bag when Sam packs up, heading back over to his computer. When Sam turns, his eyes narrow in that concerned brother look. But on his face, or at least from what he can’t see, it looks like a paper face plastered over his own. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m a demon, Sammy. I don’t need this stupid stuff.” He makes a pointed note at the open canister of rock salt in the bag with a look of offense.

Sam raises a brow.

“C’mon! I don’t wanna waste time, so let’s go salt and burn the thing.”

Sam pauses but then he shrugs. “I need to drop by the guy who wrote the article. He took pictures he wasn’t willing to put up.”

“What? What kind of journalist is he?”

“A superstitious idiot.”

“And you’re gonna go what, interrogate him?”

“I’m not about to waste my time. Just get the pictures.” But by the suit Sam’s wearing, it’s obvious he’s not just passing through. Dean gets a sly look as he eyes Sam’s getup, only to follow his brother’s eyes to the suit on the bed next to him. “Look the part, Dean. It’s not karaoke and drunken bar fights, so don’t lower your expectations any more.”

Dean flashes him black eyes and a matching smile. “You’re one to talk when all you’ve done is wallow for the past six weeks. What else did you do, guzzle demon blood and have pity sex?”

“Then don’t ask stupid questions. Let’s go.” Sam puts more effort into the caring brother routine, though Dean can clearly see right through it. The longer he’s been in Dean’s company, the more he stops questioning it in its entirety. He knows this rodeo.

It’s just his luck that Dean doesn’t care.

On their way out to the Impala, the only decent looking, non-sketchy car in the parking lot still there by morning, Dean’s throwing the suit in the back of the car and dressed in his day-old clothes. “What?” he starts just as he slams the door behind himself.

Sam, who has learned not to question it, shakes his head. “You’re not going to get anywhere smelling like beer and piss.”

Dean’s teeth bare at him in a ragged grin. “Then it’s a good thing one of us is the man here in case your stupid journalist doesn’t talk. Which he won’t, because if he’s the good type of superstitious, he’ll be too drunk to care. And if he’s not, well, a few Bible-burning tricks oughta make the caged bird sing.”

Sam rolls his eyes as he puts the car in gear. As he turns back from glancing over his shoulder, Dean lashes out at him with a roar, laughing until he realizes Sam is completely ignoring him.

It’s not long before Dean’s sobriety starts to get to him. “You’re just gonna what, go in there, guns blazing, and hope you hit a ghost?”

“I don’t know if it’s a ghost. Looking for results online for ghostly lights doesn’t narrow down anything. Vengeful spirits, demons messing around, or just stupid kids with flashlights. The latter doesn’t explain the insane murder spree all the last vics went on.” He looks to his laptop set aside, a cautionary distance away from Dean. “If I had the time to research more on the way, I’d know more.”

Dean shrugs. “Whatever. You’ve got me, so you don’t need your stupid research.” He tosses a disdainful look to the suit in the back. “No monkey suits for me.”

Sam rolls his eyes and ignores him, keeping his eyes on the road.

~

They roll up to a cozy-looking house in the suburbs in a busier, but not quite urban part of town. Sam gets out and shuts the door behind himself, warning Dean to stay put, to which Dean laughs in his face and kicks his way out of the car.

The slam of the door hitting the frame makes Sam turn, glaring. “Stop that,” he chides as Dean rides up to him, looking bored. “That’s your car. We’ve got to use it.”

“Whatever, bitch.” Dean’s eyes flick to the door. “So, do I bust in, or is the guy supposed to be alive?”

Sam scowls, straightening out his suit as he moves past Dean, up to the plain door. The neighborhood is utterly silent, devoid of anything besides background noise stretching from the city. He knocks a few times, waiting.

Muffled noises approach from behind the door. “Who’s there?”

“I’m Angus Wright from Weekly World News,” Sam starts, shooting a look to Dean to _be quiet._ “I read your article about St. Vincent’s and I wanted to come talk to you.”

A lock clicks behind the door. Then another, following the scrape of a chain. “Weekly World News…?”

Dean mimes breaking open the door and Sam keeps his eyes on him, narrowed with a warning. “Yeah. I was hoping you’d answer a couple questions. That story really caught interest.”

More locks click, about five in total, before the door slowly creeps open to just an inch or two, a fresh chain hanging above their heads from the inside. From behind the door is the reporter, whose eyes move over Sam with a questioning look before he relaxes his tensed shoulders.

“Oh, well I hadn’t thought it would get anywhere. To be honest, there’s not much I published in that article.”

“Why’s that?”

The door opens a little wider, exposing the middle-aged balding man to Dean, who has the nerve to grin at him with a flash of teeth. The reporter visibly jumps in his skin, quickly darting his eyes back to Sam. The chain at the top groans with how far it’s been pulled. “You know, I didn’t think the kids these days would appreciate hard journalistic work. It’s no political science piece or whatever’s popular on Wall Street, but...”

“Would you mind if I interviewed you? For an article—it’s to give some more attention to you and your website.”

The man’s dark beady eyes light up. “You went to my website? _Monsters Among Us_?”

Dean snickers under his breath. Sam sighs. “I...yes. It was...interesting, to say the least.”

“Then I guess an interview wouldn’t hurt...” The door closes before Sam can put his foot in the way to stop him. Then he hears the scrape of chain and the door opens wider now, revealing the short, overweight man in wrinkled plaid and dark, swampy green pants with mysterious dark stains. He ushers them in, though pausing when Sam slips past him, leaving Dean there.

Sam turns around, sensing the tension. “Don’t mind Kevin. He’s an intern.”

The reporter’s eyes flick back and forth between them before they settle back on Sam, but not for long. “I...uh...okay...” He flinches when Dean makes a move like he’s going to pounce on him, forcing the much shorter man to scramble like a frightened dog on hardwood flooring.

“Sorry about the place, it’s been a while since I’ve had company.” He’s not lying, going by the takeout containers piled up in the trash along with various clothing items strewn about. What strikes him first is the fact all of the windows are covered with heavy drapes, the only source of light coming from a laptop sitting on a coffee table.

“Sit, please,” the reporter gestures to another couch that looks as questionable as the one across from it where he plops down. “So, what got you interested in the paranormal?”

Dean takes no reservations in roughly collapsing onto the couch, making its joints groan. The stale carpet beneath their feet, at one time an off-white color, looks moldy yellow in the lack of light. Sam sits a good foot away from a shirt with orange stains on the side arm, briefly veiling his disgust.

“I don’t have much time today. Why don’t you tell me what you left out...” He stares at the sudden outstretched hand in front of him, reaching over the laptop.

As if getting the message, the reporter pulls back. “Ah, sorry. Some of us reporters can be real professional, huh?” He looks to Dean for reassurance. Dean’s not even paying attention—it’s doubtful he knows it. “I’m Michael Suthers. Professional reporter—well, _ex-_ reporter of Entertain Weekly. I got my first taste of the paranormal while following Belladonna.”

“The porn star.” Sam deadpans, earning an eager nod from Michael as Dean snickers.

“So there I was, following up on some rumor that Belladonna was consorting with her new beau who looked a little robotic in the public eye, and—!”

“I asked about St. Vincent’s. I don’t care about what pathetic life you had before.” Sam’s expression turns deadly serious, conveying a message Michael only grasps at like a bundle of straws. The reporter’s eyes are glassy like the film of poached eggs. “If you want to validate your failed exploits by cooking up some pixie dust with the paint you’re huffing, don’t dump it on me. Tell me what you saw and why you’re acting like a paranoid schizophrenic on a drunken bender.”

Michael stutters and his eyes move to Dean who leans forward with a snarl of teeth in an unfriendly grin. “Yeah, I’m getting tired of you. So spill your guts. You’re not worth the effort for someone else to do it.”

Dean’s eyes flash black before Sam can stop him, prompting a panicked breakdown in record time. “I-I went to St. Vincent’s because I had an ear to these rumors going around in these groups of teenagers—a-about a witch coven, o-or Satanists or something making a racket. I-I-I thought it was just these wannabe idiots, b-but then one night, I saw _something_ after these kids in black hoods got kicked out by the police! There was this light, just...flickering there in one of the windows.”

He reaches for his laptop, making a few clicks before he turns it around to Sam and Dean, revealing pictures taken of the inside—and to their luck, a flash of light in just one, hiding in the corner like a ghastly figure taking a swing at peek-a-boo.

“The victims,” Michael continues, voice hushed as his eyes dart around the room, “ _all_ of them have been there. Ever since those kids started going there a couple months ago. They say that everyone who sees the wandering flame goes crazy!”

Dean rolls his eyes beside Sam, who tries to maintain some air of professionalism. “Do you have any idea what you think that...flame could be?”

Michael shakes his head, the glow of his computer screen illuminating the sagging features of his face. He looks haggard in the low light, as he did at the door. Haunted. “I got a look at one of the cloaks worn by those kids. Whoever they were,” he clicks around some more, his eyes widening as he settles and pushes his computer back. “They weren’t playing around. Just look at those symbols.”

Lo and behold, there are familiar images of pentagrams with what looks like botched witchcraft, in the sense that it’s simpler, with symbols drawn in a circle with a pentagram inside, lines coming from the sides drawing what appear to be snakes encircling a pair of torches. In another picture, a blurry one most likely taken of a fleeing cult member, symbols flutter in still frames, printed in red on a black cloak.

From what Sam can understand of the strange mix, there are Greek symbols.

Well, that narrows it down.

Dean takes one look and grunts, growing bored. “Honestly, what you buzzards will do for a story,” he grumbles, staring pointedly at Michael. “You think you’ve got something and it’s just a damn ghost. So you squander what you’ve got—you didn’t put the pictures up because you don’t own them anymore. You sold them, and now you’ve got your little paranoid act so we’ll buy it.” Dean scowls, standing from the couch and leaning forward. “Well, guess what: I’m not buying anything you’re selling, because you’re a brain dead asshole trying to pander to bored teenagers thinking that anyone will take you seriously.”

Sam stiffens beside him, his eyes sliding over to his brother. “Dean...”

“You’re the worst kind of pathetic.” He shrugs at Michael who stares at him, his mouth agape in horror. “Someone had to figure it out for you.”

Sam clears his throat just as Michael turns beet red. “G-Get _out!”_ he nearly shrieks, his knuckles pale white but his face as red as a tomato. “Get out of my house! You publish anything I said and I’ll _sue,_ you hear me!? Get out!”

Sam heeds the empty threat, nudging Dean along and growling something under his breath along the lines of _say something and I’ll exorcise you myself_ until they’re outside Michael’s house, the front door slamming and locking shut behind them.

“Try that one more time,” Sam starts as Dean takes off to the Impala, “and I’ll lock you in the trunk. And I will _leave you there,_ Dean.”

Dean’s lips split in that awful smile of his. “Good luck trying.”

~

They’re back at the hotel, waiting for nightfall. It’s three in the afternoon when Sam does more researching, going off of memory and having no such luck in finding what he needs. Dean wastes time by arguing about why he should have the First Blade, pointedly ignored.

It’s three thirty when he has a hit. “So get this: it’s not a ghost or a demon. It’s close to Satanism, but it’s Ancient Greek mythology. The symbols on the cloaks the cultists wore and their summoning circle belong to a certain category of deities.”

“CliffsNotes version,” Dean calls absentmindedly from the bathroom, doing whatever it is demons do. “I don’t care, Sam. You’ve gotta figure that out sometime.”

“I know you don’t,” Sam retorts, keeping his eyes on the screen. “All of the victims went to St. Vincent’s in the time the cult has been there. Each and every one of them reported seeing floating lights in the windows, just out of the corner of the eye. No one saw the flame directly.”

“ _And?”_

“The last vic had no connection to the place. She was hospitalized after she murdered her fiance and her family when they called the police, saying she’d lost her mind.”

“You sure about that?” Dean has a bottle of bourbon in his hand—how he got it, Sam doesn’t care to know. “’Cause I’m thinking she had more than something to do with the last vic being a little too interested in the paranormal.” A stack of photos flops down in front of Sam, with the pretty brunette woman, whose face had been a cover feature of only a couple articles mentioning her gruesome suicide, posing with a familiar face of a short, balding man. Both are smiling, holding flashlights with arms looped around each others’ shoulders.

Sam picks up the photos, studying them. “Where’d you get these?”

Dean rolls his eyes as if it’s the most obvious thing. “Duh. Idiot left them on the kitchen counter while he tried to kick us out.” He shakes his head, tipping back the bourbon. “Amateur work, Sammy. Find something that’s a challenge ‘cause otherwise you’re on your own. I don’t care that much for some poor bitch.”

“They were ghost hunting buddies,” Sam hums to himself, clicking over Michael’s website and scanning through articles. None of the pictures show her, save for a blurry one with a woman in bleached blond hair. Going by the dye job from the last photo, it’s probably her. “Here’s something you didn’t know—the floating torch and the insanity belongs to a creature called a lampad.”

“A what?”

“Lampad. They’re said to be nymphs of darkness, companions of the goddess Hecate, also known as the goddess of witchcraft and necromancy in Ancient Greek mythology.” Sam leans back from his laptop, eying the half-empty bottle of bourbon with little interest. “The light of torches the lampads use to escort Hecate is said to have the power to drive anyone who views it insane. Going by the photos, Michael’s already seen it.”

Dean chuckles in between swallows. “He’s gonna die then, huh?”

“Looks like it.” Sam clicks over his tabs, reading over the information he’s just absorbed again. “They come out at night and light the path for Hecate to travel. Going by how there’s only been reports of two lights at once at the most, the summoning ritual isn’t complete. The cult, or whoever they are, is trying to summon Hecate.”

“And what does that have to do with us? C’mon Sammy, skip the details.”

“It means they’re doing the final summoning tonight, Dean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t mind Kevin. He’s an intern.”
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean makes a grunt of disgust. “Is _that_ the Mystery Machine?”

Sam’s head turns to where Dean’s attention is at before he rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Pay attention.” He gives a cursory glance to a van parked on the other side of the lot behind the chain-linked fence, barely visible in the night. “You’re on lookout duty. Get ready.”

Humming a low groan, Dean continues to glance out the window, bored. “What’s this witch god got to do here? Some bunch of cultists dicking around isn’t worth showing up for.”

“I doubt they care.” Sam squints out the windshield, turning the key in the ignition to cut to silence in the car. Once the Impala’s lights cut out, so do the other set of headlights Dean has been staring at. “Let’s go. Do you see anything?”

Dean’s eyes roll to black as he scowls. “Waste of time, Sammy. I’ll bet you his soul it’s that reporter.”

Sam says nothing, leaving Dean to his own devices as Sam grabs his duffel bag from the back seat and paws through it. “Really? Not gonna respond now? You really are a soulless dick.”

The jingle of keys and the sudden open and slam shut of the door interrupts Dean. Sam leans down to the cracked window, his eyes hard and focused. “Radio me when you see the lights. Whoever’s over there, just ignore them for now.”

He turns and leaves before Dean can get much of a word out, leaving him to grumble to himself about how not even Crowley was this rude—though ten times as annoying. “Yeah, sure. Whatever, meat popsicle.”

Sam clicks on his flashlight and does a cursory sweep of the place, the light glinting off the chain-linked fence until he climbs over it and drops down, disappearing into the night.

As Dean watches him go in mild interest, he continually glances to the other car there, stark white in contrast to the dark night. When he turns back, Sam’s flashlight has been cut.

A mild scratch of interest crawls under his skin as he hears the click of ignition coming from the distance, the white van’s exhaust curling in the damp air as the lights remain firmly off. He can pierce through the dark at the slightest glance, taking little more than a flick of black eyes and scrunching his gaze to focus.

The ghost of the Mystery Machine’s engine cuts once more, disappearing into the black of the night.

From the corner of his eye, Dean catches a flicker of light.

~

The asylum is dead silent. Sam keeps his gun in his hand and his bag strapped to his back, research inconclusive and it’s better to bring every weapon he can imagine rather than play by trial and error. Dean’s checked out so far, without a word from him that Sam doesn’t come to expect in the first place.

Save for the light of his flashlight, the asylum is dead. There is no light besides that of the moon, bright and full as it climbs the sky. It’s a cloudy night so the light comes and goes, flickering like shadows just out of sight.

The sound of a rock clanging against the metal of a rusted door thunders in his ears. He stops, his breath still invisible and no chill to speak of. It’s a cold night, threatening to numb his senses as the night stretches on.

From the shadows in front of him, Sam turning around to investigate the sound, Dean appears, black eyes and all as he clicks on his own flashlight, coming dangerously close to Sam’s face.

“Boo!”

Sam whips his head back around, quickly disappointed to find Dean standing there, shadows drawing long on his face from the light under his chin. “Did I scare ya, Sammy? Gonna need a change of pants?”

Any trace of an expression fades. Sam frowns, squinting his eyes at him. “I’m busy. Have you seen anything of Michael yet?”

Dean snorts. “Michael? What d’ya want with him? He’s a dead man by morning.”

Sam’s eyes travel to the side, his chin moving to gesture behind him. “We’ve got company. My guess is him.”

Dean moves to look past Sam’s shoulder, his eyes bleeding black once again. He scoffs, shaking his head. “What, does he want a going away party? Early funeral reservation?”

The flashlights suddenly begin to flicker, cutting out as soon as Dean stops. Sam shakes his, knowing it to be useless as the air starts to chill, like a dial being turned to a freezer. “Maybe he wants a second line.” He stares Dean dead in the face, watching his breath crystallize as Dean raises a brow.

The sputter and click of a fire being lit scrapes against the walls from beyond Dean. Sam squints through the darkness that quickly grows when all traces of moonlight disappear, enveloped in clouds and leaving the asylum in the dark.

“We’re not in Louisiana anymore, Toto,” Dean starts toward the source of the noise before he stops and turns to Sam. “Catch ya later. I smell a summoning.”

He vanishes in a blink, leaving Sam alone and travels to the source of his suspicion. On the second floor near an old physician’s office the source of his suspicion is confirmed, watching the shadows of light dance upon the walls opposite of the door he leans to the side of.

Without further ado, Dean kicks open the door, the crash of it colliding with the wall and fragmenting old cement sweet relish with the horrified jump and fall of a lone victim, sitting with what is most definitely a summoning circle and some strawberry scented candles from Hallmark.

“Really? Is that the best you can do?” Dean tsks, clicking his tongue as he surveys the work, the figure in black quickly scrambling to sit up, gasping when it meets Dean’s eyes. “C’mon Michael, you’re supposed to be better than that. Who’re you trying to summon, the gay devil?”

“How’d you—What did you—When— _What!?_ ” Michael’s hood to his sweatshirt falls back, revealing his pitiful face in the firelight. “How’d—How’d you get here!? There’s an electric f-fence around this place!” He stutters to his feet, backing away from Dean in a few steps that crunch on broken cement. “You shouldn’t be here!”

“And you should be killing your family.” He pretends to check his wrist, meeting Michael with an expectant, flat look. “Not like you got one anyway. So what’s with the getup, you misspelled ‘Satan’ and now Santa’s gonna ride your ass to crazytown?”

Michael is immediately guilty, though his expression quickly turns vengeful with a dark glint in his eyes. “What’re you talking about? I’m just here—”

Dean steps around the devil’s trap, which too Michael’s credit, isn’t too much of a failure like him. “Summoning a lampad? Or, whatever you think is gonna summon one? ‘Cause I can tell you now that you’ve fucked up bad.”

“Wh-Why do you say that?” Oh, Michael and his many questions.

Dean nods toward the door, just as shadows start to dance, coming closer to them as a wandering torch appears, slowly approaching the door. Michael gasps, clamping his mouth shut as he slaps a hand over his eyes and ducks lowly to the ground. Dean kicks over a candle, all three going out with just a look.

The torch stops outside the room, seemingly held by nothing and about eight feet off the ground. It sways from side to side, though it remains paused for a time being. Unbeknownst to Michael, Dean can see more than a torch.

From his eyes a tall figure, pale as death and the color of moonlight stands, with long, gaunt limbs and spindled fingers wrapping around the torch. Its hair reminds him of black tar. It twists and turns like oily snakes, coiled and floating as if submerged in water.

For some reason, it doesn’t turn to look at him. The lampad continues on its path, apparently satisfied as the light trickles out of view.

“Is...is it gone?” Michael peers out from his sweatshirt, his eyes wild and unlike their usual color, they’re bright yellow like the flames of the torch, fading in the blink of an eye.

The lampad leaves a dizzying effect on Dean that doesn’t just shake off. His head spins, aggravatingly so when he’s not meat to _be_ affected, but that doesn’t mean Sam isn’t.

“Let’s just say whether or not it’s gone, you’ve got bigger problems. What happened to the girl?”

“What girl?”

Dean scowls, his eyes flashing black to startle Michael out of his stupor. “Don’t play with me. The girl you dragged along with you to go ghost hunting. What’d you do to her?”

He stalks toward Michael who cowers in place, up until Dean takes him by the collar and slams him into the cement wall. Blood splatters from the force, Michael’s eyes swimming and the strong taste of copper in the air means Dean’s probably broken something. “What did you _do,_ Michael?”

“I-I-I...” He swallows, his eyes alight in the darkness. “She was my cousin, Kaitlyn.” He sniffles loudly as a shudder runs through him. “We used to go ghost hunting together, like—like you said… She was really interested.”

“Interested as in cheating on her husband or interested as in a loser like you?”

“What? No—No! Not like that! Kaitlyn wanted to go here before her wedding, since we’ve been doing this for years. When I told her about the cult I was reporting on, she wanted in.” Something wet drops onto Dean’s hand that isn’t blood, prompting him to release Michael and let him slump against the wall, shaking off his hand and wiping it on his jeans.

The clouds gathering around the moon disperse as moonlight fills the room through a broken barred window, catching on Michael’s face. With Dean out of the light, he can’t see just how little Dean cares for him or the light burning in his eyes.

Michael stops, freezing in place. His head wanders, eyes wide and beady. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” And then he hears it: the scuffle of feet dragging across the first floor where there’s debris scattered everywhere. Somewhere while he’d been meaning to get to Sam he’d noticed the symbols spray painted on the walls, though he never followed them beyond that.

He turns back to Michael, any hint of anger deflating in the decreasing value of having Michael to be angry at. “Looks like we’ve got company.” To confirm this, all cold in the air has vanished, Michael’s breath no longer visible.

For now. “The _cultists?”_ he whispers, horrified. Only he reaches for a camera around his neck, to which Dean shoots him a glare.

“Unless you wanna speed up the dying process, I’d recommend getting out of here. But I don’t really care either way. I can just kill you now, too.”

“What’re you talking about? You wouldn’t—!”

“I would,” Dean reassures, holding up his gun and holding it to the light. Not like he needs it, but how Michael’s eyes nearly pop out from his head from the explosive force of horror. “Maybe you’re worth it. After all, you dragged your stupid cousin here and got her killed. But you’re not dead yet, so either you’re already crazy or you’re not telling me something.”

Michael’s hand goes to the back of his head where it pulls away covered in blood. He’s too dazed to care, staring absently at his hand. “I didn’t know it would happen so fast,” he chokes, wiping at his eyes with a heavy sniff and leaving blood smeared on his face. “I tried to tell her it was just nerves after she saw the torch. She started _screaming_ at the top of her lungs, saying she’d seen a monster and she wouldn’t stop crying when I took her to my house. I couldn’t—I couldn’t just take her back home then. When she finally calmed down I thought everything was okay. I mean, my heart was racing when I got home from dropping her off. She was bleeding from her eyes, crying _blood!_ I thought I was losing it until she was just...fine.”

“And you came back?”

Michael nods, his voice numbed by either pain or shock or the growing insanity waiting to overtake him. “Anything for a story. I had to. I couldn’t just let my fans down! Do you know what kind of insult that would be to not only them, but my career?”

“Yeah, listen—I really don’t care. About you or your stupid basement trolls you call ‘fans’. You got someone killed, Michael. If you really don’t feel anything at all, then you’re as soulless as I am.” He snorts. “Or maybe my brother.”

“Y-Your brother? Who’re you talking about?”

Dean rolls his eyes and flashes his fangs, tired of the questions. “We’re not reporters. We came here because of some stupid cultists, and now you’re getting people killed by making them come here. So you’re just as bad as they are.” Whispering crawls into his ears in hushed voices, alerting him to something more pressing than a sniveling ex-reporter. “I don’t care about you. I’m just here for the fun.”

“ _Fun!?_ ” That seems to snap Michael back to his senses. “You call this ‘fun’!? You cracked my skull open!”

Dean leans forward, unbearably close to Michael’s face as his lips split in a dour grin. “And I could do more than that if I cared enough. But right now, you’re not my biggest problem anymore.”

He steps back and disappears in the blink of an eye, leaving Michael breathless and alone.

~

It’s close to midnight when Sam spots the light. Its shadows lick up the walls as it makes its rounds on the third floor where he’s at. The second floor had been too caved in on one side and any other stairway from the first floor had crumbled just by looking at it.

His phone, sitting silently in his pocket, has been lit up with text messages from Castiel. Sam pays them no attention, muting the conversation and toying with the notion of blocking Castiel’s number. Not like it would do much—

The chime of what sounds like chains clicking together draws near and Sam presses himself into a patient’s room, keeping behind the door as his breath condenses in front of him and the broken glass of the door window frosts over with a ghostly breeze.

Gun drawn, he spares a glance outside the window. Slowly he hazards a glance, feeling a dark presence draw near and as empty as he feels, the darkness exuding from the spirit fills him shallowly.

He spots the torch and the light hits him like a migraine behind his eyes. He coughs on a sudden forceful urge to throw up, bile violently rising into his throat. He turns his head to muffle the noise with his elbow, hot breath scalding through the fabric of his sleeve and freezing against his skin.

The world starts to spin in a lazy, lackadaisical whirl. His eyes burn with a stinging prick before the pain starts to grow, shards of glass pushing through the whites of his eyes. He can’t focus on anything, feeling too blind and dizzy, his eyes white hot and the rest of him turning to ice as he notices the faint traces of light growing brighter.

“What’re you _doing!?”_ Dean’s voice surrounds him in a hushed roar, tackling him as a hand slaps over his face, covering his eyes. He stumbles and falls, Dean hissing in his ear before his feet catch the ground and he’s dragged away from the door.

Dean snarls like a tiger, animalistic in his rage coursing through him. The sharp pain still persists in Sam’s eyes, feeling like he’d slammed his head into the jagged rocks of glass still standing in the window of the door, shredding what’s left of his eyes. “You idiot, you stupid _idiot._ What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Working a case,” Sam’s voice wavers, his throat constricting around his words. Without Dean’s hand around his eyes he can feel the moonlight on the skin of his eyelids, heavy and ice cold. The combined ache forces him to gasp for air, unable to catch his breath. He means to say something else, feeling the darkness grow closer, only for it to disappear and leave him completely.

Too bad the pain refuses to let up.

“How much did you see? What did you see?” Dean is strangely insistent, forceful as he grabs Sam’s hand rubbing at his eyes. “Don’t touch your eyes. What did you see, Sam?”

Sam ignores him, pressing the heel of his palm into his eye and his fingers into the other. He can feel blood trickle through his hand, cold as ice. His legs crumble and fail, falling against a wall conveniently behind him and scraping his back on his way to the floor.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean snaps, swearing in a growled mutter. “Are you crazy, too? Was being Tin Man not good enough and now you wanna be what, the fucking scarecrow?”

“My eyes,” Sam coughs, sounding hoarse to his own ringing ears. “Are already on fire. No need for straw.”

He means to ask but the words die on his tongue as the pain twists, turning beyond excruciating and digging deeper.

“C’mon, princess. It’s not that bad. Not like you saw it, right?”

Silence makes Dean uneasy.

He swears again. “Are you fucking _kidding me_? What the hell is wrong with you, Boy Wonder? You are the dumbest fucking brother, I should leave you here to die ‘cause either way, you’re fucked.”

Sam’s hand is pried from his eyes with little force from Dean. Dean pulls open his left eye with his thumb and forefinger, hissing. “Don’t be such a baby,” he growls, almost ripping Sam’s eyelid off with the force that he uses. But as Sam is greeted with a watery image of Dean, the black eyes narrow at him with staunch disgust.

“You dumbass,” he lets go of Sam, letting him press his dirtied hand to his eye. “First with the reporter, then the dumb chick, and now you. You’re gonna make me go gray if I try to care any more than I already don’t, Sammy.”

“Then just leave,” Sam spits, tasting blood on his mouth. It makes him want to gag and vomit all over again with the forces that be splitting his stomach open. “I don’t care what you do. Either be useful or go crawl back to Crowley.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. Here’s the bad news: you can’t survive a lampad. Well, I don’t know if you’ll go crazy or something, but I guess that’ll give you something to think about. Anyway, you’re gonna die. No changing that.”

“Thanks for the update,” Sam spits back, Dean’s voice obnoxiously pinging off the sides of his skull. A migraine forming feels like a supercell thunderstorm threatening to burst. The pain is raw agony filtered through the ice cold of his veins and the shrieking heat coming from his eyes.

A sigh breaks him from the focus on the pain. “Well, I’m not gonna have you on top of the cultists. Newsflash, but we don’t have time to deal with you. Company’s coming and by my guess, they’re already completing the summoning.”

“And I can’t _see_ at the moment, Dean.”

“Yeah, no shit. It’ll pass.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Yeah, dying feels like that. Too bad for you.” Dean shuffles closer, sending a chill down Sam’s spine when he can feel his brother’s demonic presence coming too close. “You’re no use to me like this and I’m not gonna wait for you to croak off.”

A hand seizes his wrist with a vice grip. “What’re you doing?”

A snort answers him. “Something you don’t like.” Dean comes close from the shadow of him pressing against the back of Sam’s eyelids, hypersensitive to every movement in his temporary blindness and even more so with Dean being the one in front of him.

Dean presses his body weight against Sam, pinning him to the wall in one sweep. Sam gasps, taken off guard as Dean’s other hand grabs his open jaw and curls his fingers over Sam’s teeth. “Don’t bite,” he orders, taking his hand off of Sam’s wrist and brings it to his mouth to slice open his palm on a canine.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice constricts with tension—fear, or the shadow of it. A tremor develops that can only be from his muscles spasming. _“Dean,_ don’t.”

“Quit whining and thank me when you’re not dead.” He squeezes his hand, holding it to Sam’s mouth and dealing with the thrashing Sam fights him with. “Who knows if it’ll work. You’re not crazier than you already are, so I guess we’ll find out.”

“Dean, sto—!” Sam’s protest dies when Dean smothers his mouth with his hand, blood leaking over his lips and trailing down his chin. His brother groans and tries to take a breath, his mouth covered and his nose clamped shut by Dean’s fingers.

“Atta boy.” He waits out Sam’s defiance until the need to breathe is too great and by reflex, he swallows.

He doesn’t pull away until he’s satisfied he’s bled enough for Sam to quit complaining. The bleeding from his eyes stops soon enough, and as he’s watching his hand stitch itself back together, Sam’s shivering stops as his throat muscles work in careful, deliberate movements as if rearranging themselves.

Sam takes gulps of air as Dean dusts himself off, catching Sam’s flashlight on the floor where his idiot brother had been standing. “How’s it feel?”

Sam coughs and spits, but stops to give Dean a withering glare. “Like I’ve just swallowed my demon brother’s blood. What’s it _supposed_ to feel like?”

“Like your demon brother just saved your worthless life. Quit groveling and let’s go. We’ve gotta get this show on the road.”

Sam gets to his feet, wiping the blood off his face and opening his eyes which burn when Dean catches a glance, though no longer with the lampad’s light.

He’d laugh if he wasn’t focused on killing a lampad. And the stupid shits that summoned it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a hole in my head where the rain comes in, you took my body and played to win.
> 
> _Evil woman._
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam looks at him like Dean’s just kicked him below the belt. “Oh c’mon, don’t be like that. My blood’s not that bad.”

“It tastes like stupid,” Sam shoots back, wiping his mouth one last time with a grimace. He retrieves his flashlight from the floor, shaking it before he tries to turn it on. It’s dead, which of course is in the plans of fate. His bag is behind the door with its assortment of weapons, slung onto his back in one fluid movement.

“We don’t need it. Let’s go kill some freaks before I get an itch.”

“What, supernatural STDs are a thing now?”

“I _will_ kill you.”

Sam huffs and ignores him in favor of going to the door, creaking it open as he searches for any signs of light. There’s nothing coming from the first floor, and the other floors aren’t accessible.

“Don’t bother,” Dean speaks up, as if in the midst of reading Sam’s mind. “They’re not on the upper floors. There are some ghosts haunting the place, but seems even they don’t wanna be near a lampad.”

“Makes sense, seeing as someone with a soul will go insane from looking at the light.” Sam searches for a way down, wary of the staircase he climbed up with its crumbling structure. “Ghosts must not be excluded.”

“Yeah, or the sight of ‘em. She’s real ugly. Almost as hideous as you, too.”

Sam raises a brow as they head out, kicking a pebble over the railing and to its demise on the first floor. “You can see it?”

“Duh,” Dean displays his black eyes, puffing his chest like a peacock. “Either she didn’t care or she’s deaf, cause she didn’t look at me when she passed by.”

His brother looks like he wants to question it as he approaches the stairs. With a nod, Sam starts down the staircase. Dean contemplates pushing him.

His own flashlight tucked into his pocket, he follows, listening for the crooning voices of the cultists.

~

They find the basement covered in protective symbols. Lucky for Dean, none of them are strong enough to hold him back. The most of which end up at the door to what must have been the morgue, its concrete door intact and seemingly glued in place. Sam has to put good effort in getting the door down without alerting the lampad or the cultists to his presence, which is a lot harder than it looks in the pitch black darkness.

With Dean’s blood in him, he can see the door quite clearly, along with the heartbeats of every cult member in the other room behind the sealed door. Dean watches him curiously, watching the visible effects unfold from the side as he plays with his broken flashlight.

In a fit of impatience, Sam’s fingers wrap around the metal door handle, ignoring the bite of jagged, rusty metal into his skin as he steels himself. But before he can open it, he hears the tinkling of the lampad’s approach, his head whipping back as Dean’s already up, standing in the doorway, silent.

“She’s coming close. Hurry it up, Sammy.”

“If standing around gets the door open then be my guest. Maybe they’ll just let you in,” Sam grits through his teeth, the chiming growing louder as the blaze of the torch approaches. It’s too far for him to see—another perk of the demon blood. “Unless you want to spend quality time with the only thing that’ll sleep with you.”

Dean whistles. “Low blow, Sammy. What bunched up your panties? I did you a favor.”

“You could do me a favor and stop _talking._ ” Sam pulls out his gun and tosses a look back to Dean. He turns back to the door, loading it with a click as one hand reaches out and wraps around the handle. With a strong jerk, the door screeches open, grinding over broken concrete that litters the basement’s floor.

In a flurry of movement, the cultists’ robes flutter like a murder of crows anxiously fluttering around, ready to take off at a moment’s notice.

“Who the fuck are you!?”

He doesn’t have the time to think of a comeback before another starts screaming. “It’s the cops!”

“We can’t leave now!” The one standing directly across from Sam, donned in a wine red cloak, must be the leader. The other hoods remain on the cult members as they anxiously try to hide their faces from Sam, the cult leader staring down the barrel of Sam’s gun. “You idiots, listen to me! The summoning is almost complete! What we need is finally here—a sacrifice.”

The static buzz of dark magic in the air crackles in Sam’s ears. “You sound so sure of yourself. Your mother must be proud. Graduating from D&D in the dark to summoning Greek gods. Real improvement.”

The cultist roars, flicking his fingers dismissively at him. “Save it for when the _real_ attraction appears.” He turns to the others, his face cloaked in shadow. “Kill him over the altar! Make him bleed like the pig he is!”

“Know from experience, huh?” Sam aims and shoots one approaching cloak in the knee, sending him to the floor screaming. As they swarm to attack him, pulling out wicked-looking daggers, the leader stands in the middle of a summoning circle, candles all around the room and the summoning circle painted in what appears to be fresh blood. The room is filled with a thin film of smoke clinging to everything inside, now filtering out where Sam is as he shoots two more, bringing them to the ground.

He doesn’t immediately shoot for the leader. The others come at him with blind rage, some picking up metal pipes from the ground to try to hit him—one lands a solid hit on his shoulder that lands with a crunch before Sam’s kicking him into other cultists, watching them fall over each other.

The chimes of the lampad’s approach are suddenly closer and a warning sets in the air when a second set starts to ring, louder than the one before. A chill sets over Sam’s skin, his breath starting to freeze before him as surely the others realize what they’ve done.

Sounds of the continuing incantation, most likely the rest of the spell, hit the air as Sam focuses on taking down the rest of the hooded members that come his way, which stubbornly keep getting back up and pouncing at him.

Though they’re no more than teenagers, they’re aggressive ones at that. Each time they lunge for him they grab his wrists, his legs, and whatever part of him they can reach before he shakes them off. With every hand he shakes off, another two emerge and constrict around him.

A chunk of broken concrete slams into his face with the flutter of a hood falling to reveal a face. His bones click and the thud of his flashlight falling is thunderous. Blood immediately stains his face in a shower of red, leaking into his eye when Sam tries to wipe it away. Dazed, he stumbles for a moment, his feet unsure and his head starting to spin when his eyes catch the blur of the bloodied concrete slab coming back for more.

When he prepares himself for another blinding hit, Dean’s flashlight appears with a flash of silver and the crack of the metal handle splitting open the cultist’s skull. Blood, pieces of skull, and brain matter splatter straight at Sam, a chunk of bone scraping just underneath his eye with the spray of blood as the teenager’s body slumps to the ground.

Dean looks impatient even as he grins. “Didya miss me, Sammy?”

Sam blinks, shrugging off the whirl of his brain spinning in his skull as his eye still stains red. Dean’s smile suddenly fades as the ringing in Sam’s ears starts to lessen, his brother’s eyes bleeding black as he looks up.

“Well fuck,” he hisses, taking note of the tacky, but accurate devil’s trap painted onto the ceiling in what is assuredly dried, browned blood. He looks back at Sam, scandalized. “You bitch.”

“Don’t look at me,” Sam turns their attention to the others regaining themselves, continuing with the chanting as the room grows stifling with stagnant, moldy air.

The cultists still standing are ridiculously large in number. Others descend upon Dean while Sam blocks a blow to his head with his own flashlight, grabbing the hand wrapped around it and twisting it back until it snaps. As the cultist howls with agony, Sam kicks her down, intent on breaking her knees as another comes at him in a mess of snarling, snapping teeth.

Dean’s voice carries as he bowls through the cultists surrounding the leader, their chants nearly drowning him out. The rough growl to it gives away how little patience he has. “They’re coming, Sam!”

The chiming of the bells is loud, just outside the room. In the commotion Sam takes a moment to count how many bullets he has left—one in the chamber. Shooting all these teenagers isn’t enough when it’s more likely their own stupidity will kill them.

The shining blue-black of a summoning circle means there’s no time to waste. Sam raises his gun to the ceiling, firing once into the curve of red around the enormous devil’s trap.

Just like that, Dean disappears. The entire room goes dark in a whisper of wind, all candles blown out as a curse hisses from his breath. Silence grips the room with a solidifying mold, raspings of dead language mistaken for scratchings of concrete from doomed cultists.

Sam’s blood boils in reverse. His veins twist and churn with another uprising of a revolt, protesting the sulfur coursing through and settling in a fine dust of corruption with a corroding rust. He blinks again and again, his eyes dry in the dark as the light has taken any semblance of control, leaving his eyes weeping with dryness and dust.

A ghostly blue light, reminiscent of a neon blue will o’ wisp, rises from the ground and twists with fluttering dust particles. The light splits in two, twisting together in two strands as the scene plays like that in a horror movie in which the monster appears from the light. This one materializes from the shadows, its skin pale gray and lit in blue, long straggly black hair obscuring its face.

More faces appear in the dark. Candles that had been blown out spring back to life with blue flames, eerily growing taller as more and more lampads appear in the room. Soon enough, the screams of occultists that meet their eyes ring in Sam’s ears with the same choral grace of a group of hellhounds, keeping his eyes to the ground and his gun pointed dumbly in front of himself.

When another set of lights appear, this time bathed in orange and red flames that border the room from every crease in the walls, it’s bright enough to see again. Sam winces through the high-pitched screams, watching the shadows on the floor as he raises his arm to shoot, hoping not to miss.

The moment a cold breath dusts his shoulder he whirls around and fires off a few bullets, knowing he’s missed with the sick laughter that cackles in his wake. The laughter grows closer, feeding off of several of the lampads while the others take to squeezing the life out of the occultists too stupid to run. They’re all doomed as is, with the wicked glow of torches now the only things that can be seen of the foul monsters.

As soon as he feels the cold, ancient breath that attacks his face, Sam scrunches his eyes shut and wrenches his head away, firing another shot. Laughter echoes in his hear with a rattling sound, his fingers starting to grow numb as a growing chill starts to pull around him like drawstrings, tied with a bow of a floating torch.

When icy fingers trail up his throat, his fingers grow slack over the trigger. The gun helplessly withers from his hands, bones freezing solid as the lampad creeps over him. His eyes remain screwed shut, refusing to look into the flame with the smell of gunpowder and sulfur in his nose, along with the foul, musty breath of what should stay dead.

“Get out of here! _Out!”_ a voice shouts from beyond Sam, slick with the slur of riding on foaming saliva. It’s a chime of familiarity that rings louder than the tolls of the lampads that circle around the room, allowing no survivors. “Get out of here you creepy freaks! I’ll kill all of you!”

There’s a snarl akin to the noise a rabid dog makes when a crash follows. As Sam forces open his eyes, sucking in breaths of the solidifying air as he tries to follow the commotion. The brightness of the floating torches keeps him from looking up further than the faces of dead occultists lining the floor. Behind him, a howl rips out of a human throat and there’s a crash like glass shattering, the shadows of flames suddenly creeping up the wall closest to Sam.

A hand slaps over his eyes and another finds his wrist. “Time to go, Sammy!” Dean’s voice taunts him, licking against his ear like the flames that burst from the floor and tower toward the ceiling. Smoke fills the room, quashing the screams and moans of those left alive.

“Hey, wait—!” Sam bites through, trying to shake off the sudden hands on him to no avail. A twist of sickness stabs through his gut, blind from the hand over his eyes that doesn’t let go until his feet find themselves on different ground in much colder air.

When Dean finally lets go of him, Sam wrenches away and his eyes take him to the asylum, finding himself just outside in the gravel parking area they’d started at before. Not too far from the Impala is Michael’s white van, like a ghostly light in the night.

Dean stands next to him, his eyes as black as coal. “We’re done here,” is all he says, cracking his neck as he rolls his shoulders. His eyes turn to the van off in the distance, staring past Sam. “Time to get rid of that thing before someone notices the freak’s gone.”

Catching a faint orange light from a window of the first floor, Sam watches it closely in an attempt to piece together everything. “What happened to him?” Another question stirs, knocked back for lack of importance— _was that Michael?_

Dean’s lips curve in a smirk that ends in a snarl. “He lost it, Sammy. _One flew over the cuckoo’s nest_ kind of crazy. Lit those things up like Michael Jackson’s hair in a Pepsi commercial.”

Sam raises a brow and squints, trying to catch his brother’s outline in the dark. “Where’d you find him?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. He showed up all by himself,” Dean chuckles, following after Sam when he takes the first steps toward Michael’s van. “You think I’d honestly stop and wait for your prissy ass? Hell no.”

Sam spares one last glance toward the orange light flickering in the window. “And the occultists?”

Dean swivels on his heels, looking scandalized. “Didn’t realize you cared so much about a bunch of dumb kids, Sammy. You sure you’re as cold as Tin Man?” He remarks mainly to himself in his quips, trailing off as Sam makes headway to the van while Dean tends to vanish and reappear within the dark, along with Sam’s flashlight.

“Didn’t you say I was soulless? What, are you afraid of commitment?”

Dean reappears with a dark laugh. “Only when it’s to your whiny ass. C’mon, make a move or something. Daylight’s only a couple hours away.”

Sam holds out a hand for the flashlight, expectant. “Go wait in the car, Casper,” he twitches his fingers impatiently as Dean hands it over. “I’ll do your dirty work.”

“Y’think anyone will notice the basement’s on fire?” Dean asks after Sam’s gone a few feet, sounding oddly human. “All they’ll find is a bunch of ash and burned concrete. Maybe not.”

“Are you worried about it?” Sam counters, not looking back to see Dean roll his eyes at him as they flash back to green. “Thought you didn’t like Michael and his ghost hunting stuff.”

“Not as much as I am pissed I had to cover your ass,” Dean spits back, his voice fading in the distance as Sam ventures further. “Next time, there won’t be a next time!”

As Sam approaches the car, he reaches to the door handle when it suddenly bursts into flames. Flames erupt from the rest of the car soon after, engulfing the entirety of it in tall licks of flame that have Sam turning back to find Dean nowhere to be seen.

His eyes scan the ground where Dean once stood, his flashlight flickering as the sound of crumpling metal fills his ears. There’s only so long until the fire reaches the gas tank, and he doesn’t stay to find out what happens then.

As he finds the Impala with the door surprisingly unlocked, he pulls himself in to Dean’s bemused smile, ignoring it all the while when he pulls out his phone and plays a voicemail left specifically for him.

“ _Sam, this is Castiel. I don’t know what happened, but hang in there. Dean’s too dangerous to be around and if you’re not answering me now, that must mean he has you. Stay strong, Sam. Don’t let him corrupt you. You know your brother and this_ monster _isn’t it.”_

Moments of silence pass with Castiel’s rough breathing. _“And Dean,”_ his voice crackles through the receiver, _“if you do anything to hurt Sam, I’m coming for you. Do you hear me, Dean? I don’t want to have to do this, but I can’t let you do this to him.”_

“Aw, getting sentimental?” Dean rolls his eyes, grimacing at the message while Sam pockets his phone. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Sammy.”

“I don’t,” Sam retorts, turning the keys in the ignition. “He’s got it out for you, not me.”

“Guess I gotta play lover boy to a stupid angel,” Dean stretches out over the seat and cracks his jaw. “Winged dicks, that’s what they are...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there's nothing left...
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	8. Chapter 8

Everything is in order. Every breath and step, from the sandbox to the playground above the stratosphere. Like a rehearsed play, Castiel composes his argument mentally, murmuring to himself up until he reaches the hallway where angels part and let him through.

A few trade cautious, concerned glances with him. Things like _“are you okay?”_ and _“is there something wrong?”_ on stiff-lipped conversations that catch him by the turn of his body when he walks away from all attention. His request to be alone needs not to be verbal, sounding more redundant as it rings hollow in the air.

The sound of whistling, faint but sturdy in the distance, chimes like a welcoming bell. Castiel doesn’t fall for it, already unnerved as he knows the shift in the air with each cell he passes. Iron bars engraved with dangerous sigils, but none of them strong enough to keep a mouthy, strung-out excuse for an angel _quiet_.

“Ah, aloha!” Metatron calls gleefully despite his whistling of prison blues. “Castiel, it’s so _good_ to see you. I was wondering if those buffs called off visitation, since you haven’t come by in a while.”

He grins and leans against the bars, not bothered by the twitch of magic that acts as a warning. He’s had plenty of time to adjust to the sizzling burn of contact. “So,” Metatron talks to fill the silence, not waiting for Castiel as the other looks at him with a gaze that can only be classified as deep contempt. “How’s your little world-building process going? Making friends with the pink monkeys?”

“No better thanks to you,” Castiel grits through clenched teeth. All markers of a manuscript are gone the longer he stares down Metatron, unable to focus on his mission. “All of your hard effort paid off only for you to never see it. You wasted your patience on nothing except your arrogance.”

“Ooh, touchy are we?” Metatron quips, feigning hurt. “I don’t know, Castiel, if I were any dumber than you think I am, maybe I’d get mad. But c’mon, look at you! You’re madder than a Spanish bull with a red flag taped over your eyes. You can’t even see what’s in front of you, can you?” He scoffs and chuckles to himself all the same, his lips splitting in a greasy smile. “No, you can’t. You’re still the same old stupid angel, trying to do heroic things without realizing you’re just a baby monkey with wings. Well, minus the wings.”

Castiel’s fists clench with rage as his nostrils flare, trying to keep his temper from flaring too much. It gives more for Metatron to poke fun at, and giving him more weaknesses to know about isn’t why he’s here.

He stops, impassively cold. “You killed Dean Winchester.”

“Is _that_ what this is all about? You wanted to come say I killed your boyfriend and what, you’re upset? Jeez, if it takes you that long to figure out what I did then you really are clueless. Your poor boy toy,” Metatron barks a laugh, dissolving into a hair-raising cackle. “Oh, wait! Except he’s no better than dust by now. I’m such a nice guy for putting him out of _that_ misery!”

Castiel glares hard at him while Metatron comes down from his laughing fit, coughing to clear his throat while his devious smile remains. Despite Castiel’s attempts at intimidation, as far as Metatron is concerned, the much older angel gives no concern to why Castiel’s here.

Metatron looks him squarely in the eyes, now much more serious than before. “Trouble in paradise?”

The other angel’s fingers remain clenched, the desire to reach through the bars and grab Metatron by his smug neck overwhelming. “What did you do to them?” he demands, his voice bordering on a growl with the anger that slips through.

“Who, Cas? The Winchester brothers?” He tracks Castiel with his eyes as he turns against the wall he leans against, pushing himself up. “Wait, you don’t care about anybody else but them. Silly me.” He takes a seat on the bench of stone that serves as his bed, sitting his elbows on his knees and holding his chin in both hands.

His eyes are cunning like a cat’s. “Did you notice something’s not quite right with them, Castiel? Besides killing off your co-dependent lover, there’s still one more pain—Sam, right?” He shuffles and contains a stretch with a grim smile like keeping a secret to himself. “Something’s not quite right with Sammy, or is it just the grief of losing dear ol’ Dean?”

Castiel’s fuse burns out. “What are you talking about? What did you do to him!?” If only the bars weren’t in the way, he’d…he’d…

Metatron rolls onto his back, crossing his legs and holding up his head with folded arms. The very picture of nonchalance. “The most predictable plot point there is, and you can’t figure it out. Tell me, what does the protagonist do when the villain and his brother are after him at a crucial moment?”

“You are no hero,” Castiel spits as Metatron blends in with the shadows. “What did you do to him, Metatron? Tell me, or I will pull the answer from you myself.”

“Tough words for a big softie,” the other retorts, ignoring Castiel’s barbed threats entirely. His own act as bristles with backward hooks that dig in with a bite. “Anyway, authors don’t spoil the whole novel in just one act, Cassie. It’s not my fault you didn’t read the lines.”

“Metatron, I swear to you I will—”

“—Castiel?” Hannah’s soft voice echoes with concern, ripping the scene away from the film. Footsteps quicken and follow after him. “Castiel, what are you doing?”

Metatron sneers from the dark. “I’ll be here when you’re done with that irrelevant plot point.”

Hannah appears beside Castiel, casting a sharp glance toward Metatron as she touches Castiel’s arm. “Castiel, what are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here, talking to _him._ ”

“I heard that, sweetheart! Let me tell ya something, you’re no spark of importance to him either! His heart’s already full, and it’s not of you.”

Castiel shakes his head, sighing deeply to himself. Much to Hannah’s concern, he attempts to appease, his heart no longer in the action. “Troubling news. I thought...”

Hannah begins on the walk back, pulling him along without a word as her hand drops from his arm. “He will tell you nothing but lies, Castiel. That’s who he is. A traitor.”

“I’m aware of that, Hannah,” he tries, failing to see a point in explaining further. He just can’t. “I needed to speak with him on the things he did before we apprehended him. It seems killing Dean was not the only part of his plan.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” she regards him firmly as they leave the prison, two guards closing in behind them to block the doors once more. “But asking him will only lead you in circles. He tangles himself up in his own lies.”

Raising a brow, he cocks his head at her, his teeth shifting as they grind together. “Hannah, this isn’t just about Metatron. What are you not saying?” When she stiffens with silence, he persists. “Speak plainly so I may understand you.”

With a shake of her head, her eyes catch other angels that carefully move around them, going about their duties. “It’s nothing, Castiel. You...you really worry me, hanging onto the Winchesters as you do. What’s done has been done and I offer my sincerest condolences—I really do. But Metatron is not the answer for whatever you’re searching for.”

“He killed Dean, Hannah,” his voice rises like a storm surge in the heart of a tangled mess that won’t dissolve. Anger ropes itself like mangled power lines and broken trees in muddy water slick with silt. “Not only did he kill him, but Dean is a _demon_. Sam is missing now, too, because of my standing by all this time. I failed him twice, and I won’t be so blind as to let Dean who’s violent and unstable kill Sam. I can’t just idle while danger passes us by, Hannah. You know that.”

Her hand rises from her side and she frowns deeply, touching his cheek. She meets his eyes, searching for something within them. “Metatron killed hundreds of your own brothers and sisters, Castiel. They were our family, like Dean and Sam Winchester are to you.”

He pulls away, discontent quietly stirring within him as Hannah’s eyes change in the way she regards him. “I can’t save them all, you and I and every other angel alive knows that. But I have to do what I can to prevent more pain and needless suffering.” Her hand falls and withers into her side as he watches, passively trying not to.

“Right,” she nods, averting her gaze. “All I ask is that you consider your own family while you work yourself ragged for the Winchesters. We need you as much as they do.”

“I know, Hannah. I’m not trying to ignore anyone, but I have no choice but to intervene. This situation has gone on too long and there are more lives at risk than you know.” Castiel shakes off the conversation like a strange twitch that strikes like blue sky lightning. An odd shiver creaks down his spine, ringing in the hollow where his wings once were. “I have to go, Hannah. I don’t need you to understand why I do what I do.”

“I don’t,” she clarifies, her voice solemn as they reach the gates. “And I never will.”

As he prepares to leave, crafting a word of goodbye, Hannah stares at him sadly, awash with the gray that comes from a cold, rainy day.

He stops in place, all vestiges of anger toward Metatron forgotten. “Hannah, I—”

“Goodbye, Castiel.” Her eyes flick upward as pillars of light descend upon him, never meeting his once.

~

Lying awake at one in the morning isn’t so uncommon these days. For Sam, it’s as commonplace as staring at the wall on the nights nothing tickles his fancy, trying to remember.

Except tonight his blood is pounding with his heart rate trembling on an unsteady rhythm. Ever since returning from St. Vincent’s, Sam has been _off._

Whether or not it’s the demon blood or the lampad starts to sound relevant, but only to him. Dean doesn’t care nor notice, and if he does, then the former applies. But for Sam, every time he closes his eyes, he remembers the flicker of the torch that burned straight through his eyes, into the depths of where his soul would be.

Strangely enough, there had been nothing there to torment or mangle. Yet somehow the lampad’s torch struck him like a freight train to the head, leaving tracks of a migraine and pain, unimaginable pain, in licks of flame that sway in his reflection when the worst of it rears its head.

He knows his past with demon blood is spotty at best, ragged at worst. A lick of blood now means nothing more than watching the ugly thing squirm whenever he’s up to it, watching the fear come alive in something very, very dead being a whole different realm of entertaining. Except when it comes full circle, which isn’t so and he immediately scrubs the idea, because it _hadn’t_ been his.

That makes it even worse. Giving Dean an advantage over him was the worst thing he could have done, besides testing whether or not a lampad could affect him in his empty husk, as Dean so eloquently puts it. There had been a slight curiosity then, but in truth, it wasn’t intentional to indirectly find a way to short-circuit his lifespan to a matter of minutes via insanity.

He doesn’t really care. Not about Michael, or why Michael hadn’t deteriorated so rapidly like he had, despite being a sniveling coward. Not about scorching his eyes on a lampad and feeling his mind run wild in all the wrong ways that were beyond his control. Not about losing control in a span of seconds in what is the most depressing record a Winchester can make.

Dean’s blood had been more than demon blood. Not just a salty, powdery burn that tasted like sulfur and sweat, but stronger. Much stronger than any blood he wracks his brain of remembering, as if he pretends to keep a record of all the blood he’s sucked down in a dwindling career of self-interest.

The way his body shook soon after swallowing the blood, right after Dean had forced him to, it vibrated with a breath of terrible, horrible life. Borrowed time reversing the damage in Sam’s veins, burning away the flames he’d caught before they’d eaten his eyes and soon devoured his brain. The moment Dean’s blood reached his mouth, he’d felt it down to his core.

Since an empty pit can only do so little besides rattle, it did just that. Dean’s blood made everything more efficient. More adept at conforming to Sam’s perceptions and running with it, ultimately ending up being saved by his brother more than once.

Like a pure uncut drug, the demon blood’s effects were gone by the time he’d gotten out of St. Vincent’s. Nothing of Dean’s power remained in him but the foul taste and the buzz in his bones in coiling around an old memory. The memory of a former addict and the first taste of the toxin of choice.

He doesn’t want Dean’s blood any more now than he did then. The thought hasn’t crossed his mind of stirring an addiction. As far as he’s concerned, it’s all dust in the wind, and little to care about. What becomes an issue is lying in his room at one in the morning unable to think properly because his mind has promptly set itself on fire.

A beer doesn’t appeal to him. There’s no use for it, but he pulls himself up because he can and he will. Staring at walls is boring, and in the few hours of quiet where he doesn’t have to put up with Dean’s complaining he hasn’t thought of a way to productively spend such peaceful time.

Beer is a cheap expense, cold and bitter when it’s fresh out the fridge and Sam has to blink a few more times than normal to clear his vision, but whatever. The first taste is a welcome distraction and his mind is quick to wander to other things, though disappointingly staying within the realm of haunting realism.

He doesn’t want food or sex, and while a drink may serve its uses, it doesn’t appeal at all. Nothing really does, an odd sort of fascination that if he cared, he may have paid attention to it.

For now, his brain burns and he doesn’t need to catch his reflection in a nearby window to see the orange light that appears on its own. Pulling his phone from his pocket does him no good when he clicks on the screen and catches text messages from Castiel, looking through without really reading words of concern that become dedications for a Sam that would care about these sorts of things.

Fire licks the inside of his eyes as he closes them. Heat burns through his eyelids and trails shadows down his shoulders and spine, reminding him of the torch floating on its own, flickering with an eerie light.

Insanity is a strange word.

~

In the morning, Dean keeps his coffee to himself with a shot or two of whiskey, muttering about the canister of salt he found close to it by ‘pure coincidence’, or so Sam says. Bitterly, he sits and drinks from the mug, forgoing anything else but it with the whiskey bottle sitting close by.

“What’re you gonna do about hot wings?” Dean asks as Sam forgoes any sort of food, too... _something_

to feel hungry or thirsty. Which he hasn’t felt in a long time, besides the growing annoyance of Dean trying to shift the blame onto anything but himself.

“I thought you were handling it,” Sam counters as he thumbs through a book, his laptop at his side. It’s his sixth and it’s not particularly interesting, but there’s been nothing to do as of late that he really wanted to do. Going through the motions makes it all that much more depressing. “What did you say, you were going to play ‘lover boy’ with him?”

Dean shrugs and downs the whiskey. “Yeah, but he’s too stupid to figure out when someone doesn’t want him. Clingy, but he’s persistent. I’ll give dickless that.”

“Careful, you might end up getting too attached.” The comment earns him a hard stare. “You talk about him like he’s more important than Crowley.”

“Whatcha tryin’ to say, I got a thing for those any of ‘em?” Dean’s voice sounds playful, but his face is stone cold. “A blank slab like you trying to play matchmaker ‘cause you’ve finally cracked? Don’t tell me that isn’t what it is.” He kicks back and crosses his feet, putting them on the table. “You really are depressing. Go get a hobby or something. Hell, you could fuck anything for all I care. Just take it out on someone who’ll pretend to listen.”

“If you could pick and stick with an insult, then you could say anything you wanted. Either way, I still don’t care,” Sam glues his eyes to the screen, looking for openings. Dean getting on his nerves is nothing new, except for how quickly he seems to accomplish that. “If you want to deal with Castiel, go ahead. He can’t come here, and I doubt he has any real ability besides personifying a brick wall.”

A headline catches his eye as Dean snorts. “You’re all kinds of crazy, Tin Man. Got a fire in your eyes but there’s no soul.”

Sam’s eyes narrow to slits. He clicks through a few other sources, leading him straight to the front page of _The Tennessean._ The headline reads like a garish young adult horror novel: _Bodies found in abandoned shed in the woods—drained of blood._

“Looks like vampires in Tennessee.” Dean grunts and groans, stubbornly draining his coffee and eying for more. “Get packed.”

“Really? Already? Look, Sam, I don’t mean to criticize you—actually, I do. But hunting vamps just seems like a waste of time. I can just show up and take ‘em out, but where’s the fun in that?”

“What, you disappointed you can’t take on vamps yourself? I guess even Dean Winchester has performance issues.”

“That,” Dean jabs a finger at him as he gets up and heads straight toward the liquor cabinet, “is not the attitude I wanna deal with. You’re pissy with a soul, but without, you’re just an asshole.”

“Takes one to know one,” Sam fires back and Dean grumbles. “I’m sure you’re familiar with more than just your own, lover boy.”

A low growl hangs on a snarl of upturned lips and grinding teeth. “Sam, I swear to—”

“What, God? Not in the building. You’ve got the next best thing: an angel without a dick.” His book sits forgotten on the table as he clicks through a few more articles, looking for something better to do. Unfortunately for Dean, the First Blade is still at Sam’s hip, and doesn’t look to be going anywhere. “So you have the option of killing vamps for fun, or hanging out with your dickless angel.”

Dean growls and downs the contents of the Jack Daniel’s in one swig. When he huffs once the bottle crashes against the counter, Sam can feel the daggers coming from him.

“Gettin’ real sick of your shit, Boy Wonder.”

A few more headlines catch interest before Sam closes the lid to his laptop, gathering it in his arm. “Then quit eating shit for once and get a move on. We’ve got work to do and I don’t want your angel catching us on a low liquor supply.”

Dean grunts, pretending with great effort to appear surprised. “Oh no—I’m gonna have to deal with your sobering up for the next couple of days.” He turns and strides toward Sam, meeting him at eye level as he puffs out his chest. “If you can make it through them.”

As he retreats back to his room, grumbling to himself all the while, Sam watches him go with a hint of distaste, orange flickering in his eyes where only Dean can see.

~

Materializing in a black wisp of smoke, the demon that appears in his throne room isn’t as cowardly as the rest, not immediately averting its eyes when Crowley’s men lead in the pretty dark-haired brunette that was once a fitness trainer.

“My lord,” she starts, shushed when a hand rises faster than the crack of a whip. Crowley’s eyes center on the demon, not one of a particularly noteworthy status as he sighs through his nose, waving off his adviser standing nearby.

“My lord, I—”

“Hang on, what makes you think _I_ let you speak?” Crowley crosses one leg over the other, resting his chin in his hand with a sideways stare. “You waited long enough to come see me for surely something you deem important that’s just irrelevant, but you came skittering up to my throne like the cockroach you are because you’ve nothing better to do than occupying my throne room with your filth.”

A few demons off to the side, guards and advisers alike, all glance to each other with differing expressions. Crowley exhales roughly and gestures for the demon to come closer, stopping her with a click of his tongue and pointing down at the floor.

Irritated, the demon kneels before Crowley, her eyes on the floor as she considers the regret of coming here in the first place. “My lord,” she grits through her teeth, feeling Crowley’s wrath starting to coalesce. “I have news of great importance.”

When she lifts her head, Crowley is there to stare at her expectantly “Well?” he prompts, uninterested as he taps his fingers against his cheek.

Her jaw grinds, tightening as she tries not to let Crowley in on her anger. “I spotted the Winchesters heading toward Tennessee. They’re most likely on a hunt, but...”

Silence lingers for a long moment that stretches for a small eternity. When Crowley finally does speak, he isn’t pleasantly surprised. Just the opposite: his expression contorts and his lips press and fold, his beady eyes darker in the light as he regards the demon with nothing short of malice.

“What makes you think I care?” he starts, his voice rising as whispers start amongst the court guards. His adviser leans in to speak to one, both casting glances at the two before them. “That the Winchesters, the most notorious pains in my back, are of my concern? Frankly, I don’t give a damn that demon Dean Winchester and his moose are out frolicking around in some forgettable state. I don’t _care_ they’re out on some stupid road trip, and I don’t care for what made you think I would _sit_ here and _listen_ to this!” He abruptly sits upright with a roar, his fingers curling into the arms of his throne.

All eyes are on the demon who feels the first of Crowley’s anger, like a dark cloud hanging over all of them. Crowley’s eyes carry nothing short of rage and the regret of coming here is tangible, especially when there is a diminishing chance of escaping this place with her life.

“Get out of my throne room! Out!” He waves to his guards with an impatient flick of his wrist. When the guards seize the demon’s arms, he stops, holding up a hand. “Wait. Actually, take her to the torture chamber. I want her flesh decorating my dungeon by lunch or I’m stringing up all of you!”

She starts to struggle, panic seizing her as she stares in horror at Crowley, the pleas quickly following as she’s dragged on her knees by the two meatheads on both sides of her. Her screams echo down the hallway, up until they abruptly stop.

Addressing his court, Crowley glares down a few door guards that shift uneasily in place. “Something the matter?” he snaps, to which the demons blindly shake their heads, averting their eyes.

His head sits in his hand as his adviser watches him without hesitation as an aide quickly makes herself scarce. A low, rumbled sigh escapes him, his fingers massaging his temple where a headache is already there.

Being the king of Hell is already a headache, but Dean Winchester is an entirely different animal altogether. One that should stay dead, unfortunately for him.

~

Starting at a small diner, Sam manages to coax Dean into behaving. Not for the free pie Tuesdays that are apparently a thing at this diner, but the $5 drinks that apparently last all day. When they get settled, Dean’s happily guzzling down drinks like a man fresh from a desert as the waitress tries not to stare.

Sam’s eyes roam over a newspaper in front of him, occasionally lifting his gaze to a corkboard toward the door behind Dean. In front of him a fresh article that paints a grisly picture of thick woods and the corner of a body bag peeking out behind a tree, containing a wild story of disappearing people and the possibility of Satanists in the Bible Belt. Following that, another strange theory of a type of wolf that would drain bodies dry and then paint trees with blood.

Dean, on the other hand, watches Sam every now and then. Though it doesn’t look like it and he doubts Sam truly cares, he waits for the flicker of orange in his brother’s eyes that appears with every odd angle of light and uncomfortable flex of his hand whenever he shifts in place. Though Sam may not be aware of it, it’s like a flashing neon sign scribbled all over Sam that _something_ isn’t right.

The hum of the First Blade keeps his focus more often than not. Sitting here drinking in a diner isn’t really how he wants to spend his day, but it gives him a reprieve from Sam’s sass. Not like he needs it, per say, but he much prefers Sam’s silence compared to his comments.

“Want to add anything?” Sam starts, not looking up from the paper in front of him. There it is—the orange light that burns in the hollow of his eyes. Dean’s lips split into the beginnings of a smirk as it fades away. Sam’s eyes are cold, loosely expectant as if waiting for a reply.

“They’re vamps. We don’t need to do the whole procedural, y’know—just hunt ‘em down and kill ‘em. I can do it with a blindfold and my hands tied. Dunno why you wanted to drive all the way over here just for those bloodsuckers.”

“Save your kinks for the bedroom—this is a hunt, Dean.” That earns a growl that startles the old man at the diner who has turned toward them, forcing him right back to the counter with a jump that rattles his old bones. “It sounds like a large nest, maybe thirty or more. If you want to take them out, then go for it. But there are also signs of demons coming in and out of here.”

“What, those black-eyed sock puppets? They’re too stuffy to be doing anything exciting.” Searching for the waitress, he swallows the rest of his third drink and he’s pretty sure the dumb bitch won’t give him another. Or Sam, for that matter. “What’re they up to now that’s ticking you off?”

“Hanging up mutilated cats and abducting children, but nothing that personally bothers me.”

“Yeah, like much would,” Dean mutters under his breath loudly enough for anyone to overhear. “I don’t know about you, but it sounds like some wannabe Dahmer on his way to psychopathy. Demons aren’t that creative.”

“Except Dahmer didn’t have a thing for pussy, so no.” Dean admittedly cracks a smile at that. “Now if it was a bunch of dicks hanging up on clothespins I’d agree and leave the cops to find that little kinder surprise.”

Dean’s face twists with disgust and amusement. “You’re sick, kiddo. Even by a demon’s standards.”

The fire that dances in his eyes haunts him with a vigor. “Hard to lower your standards past that.” He gets up from the seat, leaving behind a ten and a couple fives as he heads out toward the car, stopping by the corkboard by the door.

Dean comes up behind him and claps him on the back, earning no sort of reaction. Not even a jump. “Time’s a-wastin’ for the freak of the week, better be on your toes if you’re gonna catch up to me.”

Scowling, Sam follows him out to the car, ignoring Dean’s snickering as he feels the temptation to leave Dean there. Won’t do him any good, but it’s worth a shot.

Shoving a map into Dean’s hands, he point to a circled spot. “Lead me there, that’s where the bodies were found.”

Dean tosses a glance at the map and shoves it aside as the Impala pulls out of the parking lot, his attention somewhere else. “Whatever, princess.”

~

Dean makes himself a vanishing act when they pull up to the woods. Only minutes later after disappearing does he reappear, a jolt running through Sam’s bones he quickly puts to rest.

“Gettin’ scared so soon? No spooks out here.” Dean jerks his chin further to the east, raising his brows suggestively. “There are signs of a nest if you keep going east, but looks like they’ve already dropped this place.”

Sam continues walking, finding an abandoned, rusting truck nestled in piles of leaves and trees. Swiping a finger over a suspicious brown spot, he inspects his finger. When his brows knit together, Dean watches as he rubs his thumb against his finger, separating a yellowish tint from the blood.

“Demons,” Sam notes, sniffing his finger before wiping it on his pants. He turns to Dean. “Vampires eat demons now?”

“News to me,” Dean shrugs, his fingers twitching when his eyes meet the First Blade, or the outline of it at Sam’s hip. “Doubt it, though. Bunch of mutilated cats up there, so maybe they’re having a party.”

His eyes trailing to the horizon, Sam makes a note of the time. “It’s a while ‘til sundown, but if there are demons, they’re already here. Where did you see that nest?”

Feigning interest, Dean cocks his gun and inspects it. “You really need me for everything, huh. Hey, why don’t we prove it? I’ll kill all those bloodsuckers before you can find ‘em.” Pleased by his own antics, Dean steps back, holstering his gun. “What d’ya say, Sammy? Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned contest.”

Sam’s expectant, mildly annoyed stare pierces straight through Dean.

“See you at sunset,” Dean remarks, his lips splitting into a sneer as he vanishes, leaving Sam to himself, who glances back to the car and assesses his current lack of supplies.

~

Sundown has Dean at an abandoned house, rotting off its beams but reeking of the undead. From the house he catches the sound of a radio, unusually cheerful as the silence of the woods is at its greatest in this small clearing.

“ _There’s a crazy little shack, beyond the tracks...”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Tis the season of bloodlust and unrequited...hatred. Right?
> 
> Thank you for reading.


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